CEBU – Secretary Herminio Coloma, who heads the Presidential Communications Operations Office, has urged public information officers or PIOs in Central Visayas to boost the government’s campaign in making communities resilient to disasters.
Speaking at the recent First Regional Summit of Regional Association of Development Information Officers attended by more than 100 information officers in Cebu City, Coloma also encouraged the PIOs to bolster the government’s disaster communications efforts by being proactive, informative, and organized.
“The role of PIOs in disaster communications is to be proactive, to pro-act and not react, to know ahead of time,” he said at the same time stressing that information officers should be literate on disaster risk reduction and management as proper information is crucial and important.
“For example, tsunami is different from storm surge. For tsunami, it’s ‘run for your lives’ so it means immediate evacuation, while storm surge, there is a 48-hour window so there is time to evacuate,” Coloma said, citing two examples of natural disasters which can occur after an earthquake or a typhoon.
Coloma said the PIOs can minimize the ill-effects of the lack or absence of information that took place in the wake of recent typhoons, by making sure that the right information is made available to the people at the right time.
With the Mines and Geosciences Bureau now undertaking geohazard mapping, he also proposed for PIOs to become competent resource persons on geo-hazard profiles of their respective local communities. He also pushed for PIOs to strongly support disaster risk reduction and management organizations from the barangay to the national level.
“There is already a devolution of responsibility… communities must start taking responsibility for disaster risk reduction and management,” he said.
Coloma challenged the information officers to help build an ethos of taking responsibility, “not one of avoidance nor not one of blaming and finger-pointing.” (Rachelle Nessia)
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