ILOILO – In a bid to eliminate communication breakdowns during calamities, the Iloilo Provincial Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Office (PDRRMO) has launched intensive training for radio operators across the province, ensuring all 43 local government units (LGUs) can operate under a single communication system in times of disaster.
Alfonso Baldonado III, chief of the PDRRMO administrative and training division, said the initiative was carried out through the two-batch “Resilient Radio Communication and Operations Protocols Seminar Workshop,” gathering municipal and city DRRMO radio operators under one standard system.
“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 admitted that interoperability had long been a problem due to the absence of coordinated training for operators.
To address this, the provincial government has already set up five radio repeaters — one in each district — supplementing the existing repeater on Mt. Cañapasan in San Enrique town. This infrastructure, Baldonado stressed, guarantees communication lines remain open even if commercial telecommunication networks fail.
The four-day seminar also taught participants how to build improvised antennas, enhancing their ability to maintain continuous contact under emergency conditions.
Baldonado highlighted another benefit of the training: stronger camaraderie among operators.
“The biggest takeaway was that the operators were able to put faces to the voices we hear over the radio during disaster communications,” he said. “Knowing each other personally will make communication faster.”
Just months before the training, the PDRRMO also distributed base radios to all LGUs, giving them direct access to the PDRRMO operations center for real-time reporting and faster coordination with the Office of the Civil Defense and the Office of the Governor./PN