The government has come up with a roadmap to mitigate the effects of a prolonged El Nino and ensure ample supply of water in the country, Malacanang said yesterday.
Palace spokesman Salvador Panelo said the roadmap, which was presented when President Rodrigo Duterte met with his Cabinet in Malacanang on Monday, included the proposal to create the Department of Water and Department of Disaster Resilience.
“We had a serious and productive April Fools’ Day as President Rodrigo Duterte presided a fruitful 36th Cabinet meeting,” Panelo said in a statement.
“The Cabinet discussed the first item on the agenda, which is mitigating the effects of El Nino and water shortage. A roadmap was presented, which included immediate, medium and long-term interventions, such as making an intensive campaign for the conservation of water and energy, creating a Department of Water and a Department of Disaster Resilience,” he added.
The roadmap also involved “dredging of waterways, replacing tunnels and aqueducts, installing water tank systems in all Department of Health hospitals and providing funding for the establishment of water treatment plants.”
The Department of Agriculture (DA) has said damage to agriculture caused by drought had reached P5bn.
The Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration said El Nino had peaked and would start weakening in the next few months.
Several parts of Metro Manila have also been hit by water shortage. Panelo said National Economic and Development Authority Undersecretary Adoracion Navarro presented a proposed Executive Order (EO) on transforming and strengthening the National Water Resources Board (NWRB).
“The EO will merge the NWRB and the River Basin Control Office into the National Water Management Council,” Panelo said. “This will streamline and consolidate planning and regulation of all water and river basins in the country. It will also draft a National Water Management Framework Plan,” he added.
The DA, however, is optimistic that the agriculture sector would still be able to hit its production target for rice and corn despite El Nino.
Agriculture Secretary Emmanuel Pi?ol said that while the total damage and losses from El Nino have reached P5bn, the drought would not cut down the national production for this year.
“In fact, the records will show that our losses in relation to our national production projection for rice would only be
0.63%. We are still keeping our (still record-high) production target of 20mn metric tonnes (MT), lower by about 500,000 MT than our previous target,” he added.
Last year, the country’s total rice output hit 19.07mn MT, which was 1.1% lower from 19.28mn MT recorded in 2017 caused by monthly tropical disturbances. For the corn sector, Pinol said the DA estimated that the total damage would reach a rate of 1.2%.
Meanwhile, he sought an “institutional change” in the way the country handles calamities like El Nino, saying the government should stop its “post-disaster intervention mindset.”
“The only way we can mitigate the damage of drought, dry spell and El Nino is to come up with a viable national irrigation programme that would prepare the funds for calamities like this. Unless we do that, we will always be picking up the pieces after every disaster and we will be spending a lot to rehabilitate and assist our farmers,” Pinol said.
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