OCD clarifies COA report on disaster equipment

The disaster response equipment found by government auditors stored in the Office of Civil Defense (OCD) warehouse at Camp Aguinaldo is only a small portion of the huge volume of equipment already distributed during past major disasters.

National Risk Reduction and Management Council (NDRRMC) executive director and OCD administrator Ricardo Jalad yesterday made the statement to clarify reports of the Commission On Audit (COA) that called the attention of OCD on the yet undistributed information materials and non-food items (NFI) worth P746,069 stored at its warehouse.

“The NFIs at the OCD warehouse found at the end of 2017 were part of the remaining items not distributed during the past major disasters in the country. These residual items are only about one percent of the original number procured by the OCD,” Jalad said.

He explained that while these remaining disaster response items were initially allocated for redistribution in future disasters, OCD opted to utilize these as augmentation or standby NFIs for minor incidents and disaster relief operations.

Last year, the OCD had downloaded rigid hulled inflatable boats, generator sets, a mobile kitchen and NFIs, among others, he said.

On COA’s report on P300,495 worth of information education communication (IEC) materials still stored in the OCD warehouse as of Dec. 31, 2017, Jalad explained that OCD has rebranded and updated its informational materials in 2016, saying the new sets of IEC were delivered during the last quarter of 2017.

Early this year, Jalad said the OCD, in partnership with Philippine Postal Corp., started distribution of the IEC materials to the regional offices for their respective stakeholders.