PERSONNAL of the Mactan-Cebu International Airport Authority (MCIAA) are undergoing training on Get Airports Ready for Disaster (Gard).
The three-day training that started yesterday was launched by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in partnership with Deutsche Post DHL and is conducted free of charge.
“This training can help the MCIAA to become better prepared to cope with the challenges brought about by natural hazards,” said UNDP Country Director Maurice Dewulf.
Participants are personnel handling the logistics of emergencies such as dealing with the high volume of incoming goods and passengers in the aftermath of disasters. The rest of the workers are a mix of staff members from the airport operations, air traffic control, security and relevant disaster management agencies.
The Gard training has been conducted in more than 21 airports. In the Philippines, this is the second Gard workshop. The first was conducted in Manila last 2013.
“We need to prepare in advance and institute preventive measures so that we can minimize the loss of property and lives,” Dewulf said, adding, “The Disaster Risk Reduction and Disaster Preparedness measures are crucial to enhancing resilience.”
The Gard training is designed to enhance the capacities of airports to keep the flow of disaster relief supplies open and working as this can mean the difference between life and death for beneficiaries.
The Gard trainors are experts in the field who conduct training and provide relevant materials. The UNDP manages the project.
DHL Global Forwarding Managing Director Stephen Ly explained that one of their corporate responsibility programs is the ‘Go Help’ which includes the Disaster Response Teams (DRT) and Gard.
“I hope that this training can enrich and make the MCIAA equipped in dealing with disaster management in the future,” he added.
MCIAA General Manager Engineer Nigel Paul Villarete explained that the relief efforts that arrived after supertyphoon Yolanda was a lesson learned.
“We were not fully prepared to handle the large volume of cargoes during the relief efforts,” he said.