The Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) met with the state weather bureau to prepare for the effects of the La Nina phenomenon, an official said.

In a dzBB interview with DSWD Spokesperson Irene Dumlao, she said that the agency met with the Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration (Pagasa) last week.

“This is one of the topics that we talked about in the last week. We had a meeting with Pagasa so we could be briefed on the situation and how we can prepare for it. From that briefing with Pagasa, we learned when we can expect typhoons or heavy rains to come,” Dumlao said over dzBB.

“So what we did was we looked at which areas would experience rains and checked our current stockpiles in those areas, how is our production and how is our stockpiling,” she added.

Pagasa recently declared the onset of the rainy season, heralding the approach of La Nina.

Dumlao said that Social Welfare Secretary Rex Gatchalian also met with the Disaster Response Management Group and the agency’s regional directors to be ready for La Nina.

She also noted that the DSWD guidelines on the “Buong Bansa Handa” framework are connected to “ensuring that we have a whole-of-nation approach in disaster preparedness by establishing an effective, efficient, and well-coordinated humanitarian supply chain management system of food and non-food items”.

Dumlao explained that the agency has created supply chains for relief response.

“By entering into relief prepositioning agreements with LGUs (local government units), we can use their warehouses. We can put our food packs in them so that when massive disasters strike we can easily access them and we can easily distribute them,” she said.

She added that supply chain 2 was linked to using the private sector’s supply infrastructure wherein they enter into a framework agreement with national and regional grocers for additional food packs and non-food items in case a calamity strikes. Jaspearl Tan/DMS