Tarlac City, Tarlac – New Clark City through Nippon Koei Co., LTD and PhilKoei International Inc. (NK-PKII) requested for a dialogue with the Provincial and Municipal Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Officer of Tarlac Province and Capas and DILG Tarlac Provincial Director Belina Herman on August 25, 2020 to gather inputs to their study on how to improve disaster resilience at the New Clark City (NCC).

PD Herman expressed her appreciation to NK-PKII consultant Mimi Estaris for seeking inputs from the DILG and the DRRM officers present to initiate developments in the area which are in line with local and national policies in disaster mitigation.

She added that all LGUs follow the national guidelines that were made more familiar by the Seal of Good Local Governance (SGLG) and "Gawad Kalasag" of the Office of Civil Defense (OCD) both aiming to set standards and challenge LGUs to do more in protecting the lives of their people.

Ms. Estaris shared that the study, their company is preparing, aims to gather recommendations from all involved parties from the national government agencies and local government units and use them as reference for the establishment of key infrastructure facilities for disaster mitigation such as an operations center, flood control system, and state-of-the-art evacuation centers.

The inputs, once finalized will be made official through a memorandum of understanding (MOU) which will be signed by concerned parties.

Tarlac PDRRM Officer Marvin Guiang suggested that some plans and strategies are already in place which could bolster NCC's plan. Protocols such as those used during the Southeast Asian Games (SEA Games) may be revisited and used as basis in crafting new ones.

Capas MDRRMO also shared that five (5) barangays in Capas are covered by the facility and there are on-going talks with concerned indigenous people (IP) communities to ensure that their ancestral domain and cultural and rights will not be encroached.

Another set of meetings with other NGAs such as the Bureau of Fire Protection (BFP) and the PNP are slated to make certain that the details of their disaster management survey are inclusive. Site visits will also be done at the provincial operations center to benchmark the best practices of the PDRRMO.

The NCC, which made headlines last year was the site for the Southeast Asian Games and is currently used as a 200-bed capacity isolation facility for COVID-19 patients that caters Tarlac residents and other neighboring provinces.