MANILA – The House of Representatives has begun deliberations on the various bills seeking to establish evacuation centers in every city and municipality across the country as a permanent recourse for evacuation in times of calamities and natural or man-made disasters.
The legislative mill began rolling Thursday with the House Sub-Committee on Disaster Preparedness chaired by Lanao del Sur 1st District Rep. Zia Alonto Adiong, approving the consolidation of 26 House bills seeking to create and fund evacuation centers across the country.
The combined measures included House Bill (HB) 16, authored by Speaker Ferdinand Martin Romualdez, along with Tingog Party-list Representatives Yedda Marie Romualdez and Jude Acidre.
HB 16, which aims to establish standard-based evacuation centers in the country’s 1,488 municipalities and 146 cities nationwide with the end view of decongesting temporary evacuation centers in public schools, is one of the priority measures of Romualdez.
In pushing for the measure, he said the traditional practice of using public schools as default evacuation centers must be stopped, considering that schools are not well-equipped to accommodate evacuees as they lack the necessary facilities.
“The use of schools as evacuation centers for displaced families also gives rise to another group of displaced individuals: the students,” Romualdez said. “There should be no trade-off between protecting lives and the education of students. The provision of adequate evacuation centers is of invaluable importance during cataclysmic times.”
HB 16 will be consolidated with HBs 1091, 1714, 2256, 2542, 2773, 2826, 2940, 2995, 3047, 3466, 3498, 3774, 3778, 4145, 4233, 4381, 4685, 5109, 5152, 5158, 5185, and 5211 to come up with a substitute bill.
Adiong said the primary objective of the hearing is to conduct initial deliberations on all 26 bills so that all pertinent provisions from each measure would be properly discussed and accounted for.
He also noted that a similar proposal was approved on the third and final reading at the House in the 18th Congress but did not make it through in the Senate.
Proponents of the measure have expressed hope that this time, their proposals for permanent standard-based evacuation centers would finally be realized in this 19th Congress. (PNA)
