From today, the National Emergency Office (ONEMI) will become the National Disaster Prevention and Response Service (SENAPRED)
The new institutional framework will turn the organization from an office into a public service. It will incorporate all of the progress made and lessons learned in recent years, and be updated to achieve standards of excellence in disaster risk management.
A new and more modern institutional framework will be implemented at the National Emergency Office (ONEMI), which will improve standards of excellence in disaster management. From today, the office will become the National Disaster Prevention and Response Service (SENAPRED).
Broadly speaking, the new body will incorporate all the progress made, based on good practices and the lessons learned in recent years. It will update, reinforce and make them binding, to achieve standards of excellence in Disaster Risk Management (DRM) focused on prevention and territorial control.
It will also establish policies, DRM plans, sectoral plans, threat maps, risk maps, an information system, an early warning system and a communications system as DRM instruments.
The system is conformed of a set of public and private entities with competencies related to the phases of the disaster risk cycle. They will be organized in a decentralized and staggered manner – through community, provincial, regional and national levels – to guarantee an adequate DRM.
It will also include a coordination structure made up of Committees for Disaster Risk Management at the different levels of the state structure. Of them, the National Committee will be chaired by the Interior and Public Security Minister.
It also identifies and defines Technical Monitoring Bodies as those entities that are part of the system and possess the technical competencies to maintain permanent monitoring of the respective threats.
The new institutional framework “will allow us to improve disaster prevention and response processes, to answer the call of the Chilean people at times when they most need the State, achieving standards of excellence in Disaster Risk Management,” stated Interior Minister Carolina Tohá.
Relevant aspects of the new service
- It is a legal entity with its own assets. Its main functions are to advise, coordinate, organize, plan and supervise activities related to DRM in Chile.
- At the regional level, it is organized into Regional Directorates with powers and attributions, subject to the supervision of the President via the Interior Ministry in coordination with the Interior Undersecretary’s Office.
- The Technical and Executive Undersecretary of each Committee will operate at the national, regional and provincial level.
- A service will be created within the service’s budget to compete in the financing of DRM instruments with priority for municipalities.
- The first and second levels of the service will be attached to the Senior Public Management System, recognizing its strategic importance.