Local governments also have the capacity to declare emergency zones in case of disasters, Pedro Ferradas, a sociologist specializing in risk management, pointed out on La Mula TV.
In the ‘Al Filo’ program, Ferradas pointed out that there is little knowledge of local governments about the powers they have in cases of disasters, which is aggravated in times of government change because there is no continuity of officials specialized in disaster management. risk.
In addition, he mentioned that another problem is the role of the central government, which is “generally excessive and does not contribute to reinforcing the role or the role that regional and local governments must play.”
“Ideally, support, advice, and resources should be provided so that local and regional governments can manage them. In principle, in the law, also in budgets and the public investment system, several aspects are considered that should be allowed to function,” said the sociologist.
In the first place, he pointed out, regional governments can budget, have and require annual funds to have first response warehouses, and these first response warehouses can be increased or decreased according to the forecasts that exist for rain and different hazards.
“But what happens is that The position of the regional governments is very passive. Some do have a lot of experience or experience recurring rains, such as Piura, which has a warehouse in advance,” he mentioned.
“There is also the idea that these advanced warehouses can be transferred to district governments to make the response more accessible. But what tends to happen due to legal confusion is that many times the regional government is waiting that an emergency be declared to make use of the advanced warehouses. And that is not appropriate because not only the national government can declare an emergency, but the regional government can do it,” he explained.
“If the regional government declares an emergency, you can make use of those advance warehouses And what’s more, it could count on resources from its budget to apply to the emergency response without any problem, even more so in the current context that several districts and provinces are declaring an emergency,” he added.
For Ferradas, the ideal would have been that Metropolitan Lima had already been declared an emergency.
“And what it would do is activate the possibility that the metropolitan government can make use of its budgetary resources to deal with the emergency,” he said.
“The Metropolitan Municipality could also declare an emergency, but it doesn’t do it because it doesn’t know about it,” he added.
In an interview with Javier Torres, Ferradas pointed out that there is confusion and misinterpretations. In this sense, he clarified that the principle is one of subsidiarity, which says that at all levels of risk management, it starts at the most local level, going from district to provincial, regional and finally to national.
“That is the principle of the risk management law. But for this to happen, there is little clarity in the authorities to expose this and point out well, Mr. Regional Governor, why don’t you declare an emergency?” he said in ‘ To the Edge’.
The full interview on La Mula TV:
[Foto de portada: Andina]
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