BY: RACHELLE M. NESSIA
CEBU CITY, June 10 (PIA) ---- Public information officers (PIOs) in Central Visayas are urged to boost the government’s campaign in making communities resilient to disasters.
In his message during the First Regional Summit of Regional Association of Development Information Officers (RADIO-7) held yesterday in Cebu City, Sec. Herminio Coloma of the Presidential Communications Operations Office (PCOO) 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,” said Sec. Coloma.
He stressed that information officers should be literate on disaster risk reduction and management as proper information is 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,” he said.
Sec. Coloma said the PIOs can minimize the ill-effects of the lack or absence of information that took place in the wake of typhoon Pablo, by making sure that the right information is made available to the people at the right time.
With the Mines and Geosciences Bureau (MGB) 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.
The PCOO chief challenged the information officers to help build an ethos of taking responsibility, “not one of avoidance nor not one of blaming and fingerpointing.”
Coloma was the keynote speaker during the kick-off of the 21st Regional Association of Development Information (RADIO-7) officers yesterday, attended by more than 100 information officers around Central Visayas. (rmn/PIA-Cebu)