Speech by President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr. at the Handa Pilipinas Visayas Leg | President Bongbong Marcos

Thank you for your kind introduction, Speaker Martin Romualdez. [Please take your seats.]

Our Interior and Local Government Secretary Benhur Abalos; DOST Secretary, Secretary Renato Solidum Jr.; the Province of Leyte Governor Carlos Jericho Petilla; Tacloban City Mayor Alfred Romualdez; my fellow workers in government; Secretary Anton Lagdameo; other distinguished guests; our other governors who are also here today and the congressmen who have joined us today, good afternoon.

Today, we launch the Visayas Leg of HANDA Pilipinas to showcase the various disaster risk reduction and management initiatives of the government.

This is done in collaboration with many stakeholders and partners since Super Typhoon Yolanda struck the country. And beyond that, also I see some technologies that have been developed during the COVID pandemic that hit the whole world in the recent years.

But putting our experience at the heart of this event reminds us of the calamity that brought unimaginable destruction to the Visayas, to the Philippines.

It serves as a poignant reminder of the power of nature and our vulnerability to that power.

More importantly, it underscores the importance of disaster risk reduction and management in the Philippines.

The Filipino spirit is incredible. It has been demonstrated during and in the aftermath of Yolanda and of COVID.

Our ability to come together, to support one another, [and] to rebuild during such adversity is always an inspiration.

We therefore owe it to ourselves and to the future – to learn from this experience and make sure that such devastation will be mitigated or somehow prevented because we are now better prepared and we are now better adapted to the vagaries of very severe weather events.

The government remains committed to advancing our country’s disaster resilience, and of course we must recognize the role of the Department of Science and Technology in this undertaking.

The DOST has been instrumental in developing cutting-edge technologies for disaster risk prevention, mitigation, preparedness, response, and recovery.

I am confident that the technologies featured in this event such as the mobile command post, the triaging trailer