Saving Bayan ni Juan

I don’t know what’s the big issue for the “no-show” of President Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III at the meeting last Monday with government officials who prepared for the contingency measures before typhoon “Juan” (international code name: Megi) entered the Philippines. “Juan” unleashed its fury over Northern Luzon provinces and most severely lashed were Isabela and Cagayan Valley.

The hullabaloo over the “no-show” came about after the media advisory sent to Palace reporters Sunday night stated that the President was set to attend the 9 a.m. meeting of the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council (NDRRMC) to be held in Camp Aguinaldo, Quezon City.

Instead, P-Noy was represented in the NDRRMC meeting by Palace officials that included Executive Secretary Paquito “Jojo” Ochoa, Presidential Spokesman Edwin Lacierda and Defense Secretary Voltaire Gazmin, as the designated chairman of the Congress-created NDRRMC, among other members of this inter-agency body.

The presence of the Chief Executive at the NDRRMC meeting would just be ceremonial, so to speak, since everything has been put in place already. That is, if we were to believe the reports of the respective heads of all these government agencies under the umbrella of the NDRRMC.

The NDRRMC is composed of government offices such as the Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration (Pagasa), the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD), the Departments of Health, Energy, Trade and Industry, the Coast Guard, the Military and police organizations which are among the key state agencies directly involved in disaster mitigation measures.

Speaking for the NDRRMC, Gazmin explained there was no need for P-Noy’s presence at the meeting because it was merely to check on the preparedness of all these state agencies with the expected landfall that day of “Juan.” They all came to reassure the public that all things have been prepared for, and pre-positioned, most especially the required rescue equipment and evacuation facility and other disaster mitigation schemes. 

A good manager does work through men. This is a basic principle in Management 101. During a post-luncheon meeting with STAR editors last week, the Chief Executive admitted he is still trying to find a healthy balance between his “micro-managing” and letting concerned heads of government agencies to run their own show at their level, especially in handling crisis situations. Let’s give space to P-Noy for him to eventually evolve his own management style.

The NDRRMC has sufficiently alerted the public and cautioned us, especially people in northern Luzon provinces as early as last Friday about the coming of “Juan.” Our weather forecasters gave Northern Luzon folks ample lead time, or more than 72 hours notice, to prepare for the arrival of “Juan.”

For a change, the heads up alert by Pagasa spelled the difference in saving precious lives and properties, not to mention harvestable crops that were spared from destruction.

There was enough time for everyone to secure their houses and properties from being destroyed by the potential strength of this very powerful typhoon heading to that part of our country and packing “killer” winds. As of last count, ten people were casualties of “Juan.”

To their credit, agencies like Pagasa and the Department of Education have adopted the popular “social networking” mechanism of Twitter Accounts to further enhance information dissemination on typhoon updates and suspension of school classes, respectively.

Such a “no show” of P-Noy at the NDRRMC unnecessarily triggered a non-issue. Obviously, this was another case of communication failure by P-Noy’s men at the Palace. Lacierda, et.al, could have notified quickly Palace media about the change in the President's schedule. The group of Ricky Carandang in the Palace communications office is supposedly also active in its social networking, and yet they could not even tweet the Palace media about the President not going anymore to the NDRRMC meeting.   

Over the weekend, I came across a news dispatch from the ABS-CBN website quoting our Permanent Representative to the United Nations (UN), Ambassador Libran Cabactulan who shared the Philippine experience in the aftermath of tropical storm Ketsana (Ondoy) and typhoon Parma (Pepeng) last year. He was quoted as saying that the Philippine government is supporting efforts to employ outer space-based technologies to better respond to disasters and calamities.

“We witnessed how useful and effective satellite imagery can be in monitoring the movement of typhoons, especially if such data are sent to vulnerable communities in a timely manner,” Cabactulan told members of the Special Political and Decolonization Committee at the UN headquarters in New York. Cabactulan disclosed we benefited from space-based technology through the UN Platform for Space-Based Information for Disaster Management and Emergency Response (UN SPIDER).

The UN-SPIDER program ensures that countries, as well as international and regional organizations, gain access to, and develop the capacity to use all types of space-based information to support the full disaster management cycle. The Philippines serves as host to one of UN-SPIDER’s Regional Support Offices.

UN advocate for disaster risk reduction, Sen. Loren Legarda made a timely call to President Aquino to convene the Climate Change Commission (CCC). Loren is the principal author of this Congress-created Commission and carries the honorific title as “regional champion” in Asia-Pacific for the UN International Strategy for Disaster Risk Reduction.

Loren asked P-Noy — in the latter’s duty as the CCC chairman — to get this inter-government agency body started this early in his administration to prepare the country better from the challenges of climate change.

The Philippines is identified as among countries most vulnerable to weather extremes from typhoons to drought, largely due to global climate change. Loren’s challenge to P-Noy is get all hands on deck in saving “Bayan ni Juan” from climate change on longer-term basis and not move only from one typhoon or disaster to another.