The Iloilo Provincial Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Office (PDRRMO) has enhanced the communications capabilities of its municipal and city counterparts, ensuring a unified response during calamities and disasters.

Alfonso Baldonado III, chief of the PDRRMO administrative and training division, said they recently gathered all radio operators from municipal and city DRRMOs for a two-batch “Resilient Radio Communication and Operations Protocols Seminar Workshop.”

“Our objective is for the province to become one team when it comes to radio communications, protocols, and operations—a single standard and a strong signal for the entire province,” he said in an interview Monday.

He noted that in the past, interoperability was a challenge due to a lack of coordinated training for radio operators.

The provincial government has since set up five radio repeaters, one in each district, in addition to the first repeater on Mt. Cañapasan in San Enrique town. Baldonado said this network ensures that the province can maintain communication even when commercial telecommunication services are down.

During the four-day seminar, participants also learned how to create improvised antennas for continuous communication.

Baldonado said the biggest takeaway was that the operators “were able to put faces to the voices we hear over the radio during disaster communications.” He added that knowing each other personally will make communication faster.

About three or four months ago, the PDRRMO also supplied the 43 local government units in the province with base radios, which facilitate instantaneous communication from the ground to the PDRRMO operations center. This allows for the consolidation and submission of reports to the Office of the Civil Defense and the Office of the Governor. (PNA)