Defense Secretary Gilberto Teodoro, Jr. (Photo from the The official Facebook page of the Philippine Department of National Defense)
MANILA, Philippines 鈥� Defense Secretary Gilberto Teodoro, Jr. has appealed to Congress and the local government聽to allocate funds for the completion and maintenance of the Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief (HADR) warehouse at Lumbia Air Base in Cagayan de Oro City.
According to Teodoro, the facility seeks the immediate deployment of essential supplies for field missions and disaster relief operations.
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鈥淭here are local items that we asked Congressman Lordan Suan to make sure to be inserted in the budget, for example, the completion of the OCD (Office of the Civil Defense) facility. That amount is needed. But it will be synergistic with the community in the sense that it is high-security,鈥� Teodoro said in Filipino on Sunday.
鈥淏ut despite that, we need the support of the local government and the Congress because once this is done, we need a budget to run it, so it is not just the cost. The construction cost is also big. Costs are needed to maintain and use it correctly because a good facility is also a waste if we will not spend on maintenance,鈥� he added.
The OCD said Teodoro visited the Lumbia Air Base on Saturday. It is one of the nine locations under the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (Edca) of the Philippines and the United States.
Teodoro also visited the locations of two other approved Edca projects in Lumbia: the Air Traffic Control Tower and portions of the airfield鈥檚 runway.