DILG and La Liga to Boost Local Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Fund
The Department of Interior and Local Government (DILG) and development non-government organization La Liga Policy Institute (La Liga) have forged a partnership agreement aimed to boost local government units’ effective use of the Local Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Fund (LDRRMF).
A component of the agency’s social accountability mechanism Local Government Watch (LG Watch) launched by the late Secretary Jesse Robredo, the CSPF provides an enabling instrument for citizen’s groups’ ‘participation in public decision-making processes and to strengthen local government-civil society collaboration towards the formation of engaging and development outcome-oriented local governance.’
“We laud the DILG, especially Secretary Mar Roxas, for continuing and, more so, expanding the legacy of the late Secretary Robredo in tapping NGOs and citizen’s groups as partners of the agency in implementing its programs and mandate for strengthening LGUs and their services to constituents,” La Liga Managing Director Roland Cabigas said.
La Liga will use the funds in its project, “Making the LDRRMF Work through the Alliance of Seven (A7) LGUs,” in Quezon City, Antipolo, Marikina, Pasig, Cainta, Rodriguez and San Mateo – localities of Metro Manila and Rizal province ravaged by typhoon Ondoy in 2009.
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| Typhoon Pablo flooding this December |
Formed in 2010 as an “inter-local cooperation” to enhance individual and collective capacities of member LGUs in dealing with typhoons and other disasters, the A7, chaired by Marikina City Mayor Del De Guzman, is the country’s first LGU alliance to implement measures on disaster risk reduction (DRR) and climate change adaptation (CCA) anchored on the rehabilitation of their “common ecosystem” which, in their case, is the Marikina watershed.
With La Liga acting as its secretariat, the alliance held a series of participatory action workshops which produced the A7-wide integrated DRR plan.
The CSPF-supported project aims to:
- facilitate an inter-LGU process with the local disaster risk reduction and management offices for DRR planning and budgeting;
- institute guidelines and parameters as well as improve mechanisms for the utilization of the LDRRMF; and,
- develop guidelines for inter-LGU cooperation including the sharing of resources for disaster risk reduction initiatives.
“This CSPF project of La Liga comes as a timely, positive development in view of the issuance by the Commission on Audit (COA) of Circular 2012-002 setting the guideline on the utilization of the LDRRMF and on implementation of the provision of the Philippine Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Act of 2010, or Republic Act 10121, which allows LGUs to use 70 percent of their DRRMF on DRR-related initiatives without the requirement of a declaration of a state of emergency for a particular LGU,” Cabigas said.
“The series of workshops to be organized through the project involving local chief executives, DRR officers and key heads of LGU agencies as well as citizen’s groups seeks to develop an A7-wide template on the effective, efficient and responsive allocation and utilization of the LDRRMF among the LGUs,” he added. (La Liga Policy Institute)
