The Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) has bared its preparatory efforts for the onset of the rainy season and La Niña.

These include the Department’s standby capacities through its stockpiling of relief commodities, human resources, logistical facilities and standby funds. The Department will also beef up its available stocks of food and non-food items.

DSWD is Vice-Chair for Response of the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council (NDRRMC) and also the lead agency of the Food and Non-Food Cluster, Camp Coordination and Camp Management Cluster, and IDP Protection Cluster under the humanitarian cluster system of the Council.

As of June 10, DSWD Central Office and its 17 Field offices have a total of P956,057,439.21 standby funds which can be used to purchase emergency relief supplies.

Aside from these, a total of P524,339,722.80 worth of stockpile of relief items including 406,709 family food packs, food and non-food items are available at the 17 Field Offices which can be distributed/prepositioned to local government units (LGUs) that will be affected by typhoons or flooding.

There are 67 national level Quick Response Teams (QRTs)  across the regions that are ready for mobilization anytime. Another 18 QRTs, in addition to the Social Welfare and Development Teams , Provincial and Municipal Actions Teams are also on alert to render augmentation support for relief and response operations.

Complementing these DSWD teams are organized and trained  private volunteers who are also on standby for mobilization and deployment to assist in disaster operations. Likewise, the parent-leaders of Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program serve as standby workforce for repacking and relief distribution.

In terms of logistical facilities, DSWD manages 18 regional warehouses that maintain 30,000 family food packs as prepositioned items at the field office or LGUs.

On top of these, the two disaster response center hubs of the Department – the National Resource Operations Center (NROC) in Pasay City in the National Capital Region and the Visayas Disaster Response Center in Cebu City – are open 24/7. These hubs boast of mechanized systems that speed up the production of the required family food packs.

The combined  production of the two mechanized system hubs  reaches 100,000 packs a day enough to respond to the needs of 500,000 people for three days.

Meanwhile, DSWD Secretary Corazon Juliano-Soliman assured the public that the Department continues to strengthen its mechanisms to ensure fast and efficient delivery of relief supplies to areas that will be affected by the rainy season. ###