Filed
First Reading
Referred to the Committee on Local GovernmentNow
Parliament Bill No. 98
In committeeAn Act Strengthening Disaster Preparedness and Response, Thereby Requiring All Local Government Units in the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region to Establish Standard Evacuation Center in Every Municipality, Providing Mechanisms Thereof, and for Other Purposes
Filed
First Reading
Referred to the Committee on Local GovernmentNow
Under committee study or floor debate. Amendments are still possible, and this is the stage where public input carries the most weight.
What this measure does
The Bangsamoro Evacuation Center Act of 2022 requires the Bangsamoro Government to build a standard evacuation center in every municipality and city in the region.
The Ministry of Public Works prepares the standard design and the construction, working from the Philippine building code. Each center must stand in a safe and accessible place in the town and accommodate at least 100 to 200 internally displaced people. It must have proper ventilation, a kitchen, water, plumbing and sanitation, and facilities for women — breastfeeding mothers are named — for the elderly and for people with special needs.
Management sits with the Ministry of Social Services and Development, delivered on the ground by the Municipal or City Social Welfare and Development Officer, who gets a designated office inside the center that doubles as their municipal office. The local government complements MSSD’s manpower through the municipal disaster risk reduction officer.
The centers are also meant to work between disasters: the objectives include giving each local government a designated place for prepositioning, stocking, repacking and piling relief goods, so supplies are staged before an emergency rather than moved during one.
Why it was proposed
The declaration of policy is a single line about safety and general welfare in crisis and disaster situations. The explanatory note is more specific: the Philippines is disaster-prone and the Bangsamoro carries typhoons, floods, landslides, earthquakes and drought, along with fires and displacement caused by armed groups. It opens with a hadith on relieving a believer of the hardships of this world.
The practical problem it addresses is one every disaster in this region exposes. In the absence of purpose-built centers, displaced families are housed in schools and covered courts — which closes the schools, provides no sanitation for the numbers involved, and gives no privacy at all.
Who it affects
- Displaced families across the region, who currently shelter in schools and covered courts.
- Women and breastfeeding mothers, the elderly and people with special needs, named for specific facilities.
- Every municipality and city in BARMM, each of which would host a center.
- Municipal and City Social Welfare and Development Officers, who would manage the centers and be based in them.
- Schools, which would stop being the default shelter.
- Basilan and Marawi City, where social welfare services are already devolved and which the Act only encourages rather than binds.
Who would implement it
- Ministry of Public Works (MPW), for the standard design and construction
- Ministry of Social Services and Development (MSSD), which supervises the centers
- Municipal and City Social Welfare and Development Officers, who manage them
- Municipal Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Officers, who complement MSSD manpower
Funding
Carries an appropriation. No figure. Construction, operation and maintenance are to be included in the annual appropriations of the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region. A purpose-built center in each of the region’s municipalities and cities is a large capital program, and the bill states neither a total nor a per-unit cost.
What changes if it becomes law
- Every municipality and city in the region is to have a standard evacuation center.
- A standard design exists, drawn by MPW against the national building code.
- Centers must hold at least 100 to 200 people and carry kitchen, water, sanitation and facilities for women, the elderly and people with special needs.
- MSSD supervises and the municipal or city social welfare officer manages, from an office inside the center.
- Local governments gain a designated place to preposition and repack relief goods.
Raised during deliberations
No published record of the debate on this measure. Parliament’s journals cover sittings up to March 2023 only, and no committee report on it has been published.
What to notice
The capacity figure is the thing to look at hardest. A center built for 100 to 200 people is the right size for a barangay-scale flood and nowhere near the right size for what this region actually experiences. The 2017 Marawi siege displaced roughly 200,000 people; a single bad flood season in the Maguindanao lowlands displaces tens of thousands. One center per municipality at 200 heads is a floor worth having and should not be mistaken for a plan that meets the region’s largest events.
Section 8 contains an odd carve-out. The Act covers all municipalities and cities in the region, but where social welfare has already been devolved to the local government — the bill names Basilan province and Marawi City — those LGUs are merely "encouraged" to implement it. Marawi is the site of the largest displacement in the region’s recent history, and it is the one place the Act does not bind.
The office-inside-the-center provision is quietly clever and easy to miss. Putting the social welfare officer’s permanent municipal office in the evacuation center means the building is occupied, staffed and maintained between emergencies rather than standing empty and deteriorating, which is how most single-purpose emergency structures fail.
On its progress: filed September 2022, First Reading January 2023, and then referred to the Committee on Local Government in July 2025 — two and a half years between reading and referral.
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