DND eyes disaster center in Palawan

MANILA, Philippines – The Department of National Defense (DND) is planning to set up a facility in Palawan to serve as the nerve center of its nationwide disaster and response operations.

Defense Secretary Voltaire Gazmin said Palawan is best suited as the country’s Center of Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Response (HADR) as the province is seldom visited by typhoons or hit by earthquakes.

“It’s still in a planning stage,” Gazmin told reporters at the sidelines of yesterday’s 33rd National Reservist Week celebration at the Camp Aguinaldo grandstand in Quezon City.

A Defense official also revealed the DND is planning to establish a defense depot in Palawan.

The setting up of the defense depot, the official said, is in line with the ongoing capability upgrade program of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP).

“We are putting up a depot-like station where we can store our relief supplies and other defense-related items,” the official said.

The same official, however, said the plans to put up an HADR center and a defense depot in Palawan have been in the pipeline even before the country was embroiled in territorial claims against China.

“This has nothing do with the prevailing tension in the West Philippine Sea. We have planned this a long time ago,” he said.

Palawan’s fifth-class municipality of Kalayaan is located on Pag-Asa Island, one of the country’s regime of island and reefs located in the hotly contested Spratlys region being claimed in whole or in part by China, Vietnam, Malaysia, Taiwan and Brunei.

All claimant countries, except Brunei, have deployed forward troops in the region.