President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. is planning to place the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council (NDRRMC) under the Office of the President to further streamline the disaster response in the country.

This was revealed by Marcos during the media interview at the ninth year commemoration of Super Typhoon Yolanda at the Holy Cross Memorial Garden in Tacloban City on Tuesday.

"I think that overall, we can say that the response to the disasters, the disaster response, has been a good one. However, I believe that there are ways when we can even make it more streamlined," he said.

"There has been a suggestion that has been going around for many years now, and that we will put the disaster response team, the national response team, under the Office of the President. And I think that we are headed in that direction because of the weather, we are suffering now from the effects of climate change," he added.

Marcos said the government aims to continue to "refine the procedures, to refine the processes, the organization, so that we will do even better than we have so far."

"I think the response, we cannot ask our departments to respond any more quickly. We can only do more in terms of actually bringing the assistance, putting the infrastructure together, and making sure that the LGUs are functioning, there is communication, that there is power," he said.

"This can be done if now there’s the NDRRMC and they are the ones who are tasked to do this. But I think it would be equally, if not a more robust system, if we put it under the Office of the President. So that’s what we are planning to do in the near future," he added. Robina Asido/DMS