Mayor Sara Duterte said the city has enough disaster budget allocated to cover the economic losses and impact caused by the coronavirus diseases (COVID-19).
For every disaster, the city government will be allocating thirty percent of the quick response fund (QRF) out of the five percent calamity fund.
Duterte said in an interview with Davao City Disaster Radio on Wednesday, that the city has around 96 million quick disaster fund as of the moment.
“If there has been an excess from the annual fund, it can be converted into a trust fund. And we decided to utilize it for disasters in addition to the current budget,” she said, adding that the excess fund last year can be set aside for relief operations.
Earlier this year, the city government allocated about P50 million to some 1,000 hog farmers in Calinan whose pig farms were affected by the African Swine Fever (ASF). It also gave about P11.3 million to the victims of the different calamities in other areas of the country.
At present, Duterte said the city government officials are discussing the possibility to using the entire calamity fund to respond to Covid-19 and will just request the city council for additional budget to replenish it.
“We are discussing if we would utilize all our current disaster fund to respond for Covid-19. And then we will just request from the national government to replenish the local government’s disaster fund to cover the remaining months,” she said.
“We are only in the month of March, and I’m sure there will be other disasters to occur in the remaining months, especially in the month of December,” she said.
She said the disaster fund for this year will also cover the people’s need during the period of the pandemic.
