‘Consult typhoon victims on rehab plan’

REHABILITATING the towns of northern Cebu hit by supertyphoon “Yolanda” last Nov. 8 also means empowering the families by consulting them, the head of the Cebu provincial government’s task force said yesterday.

“We want to ensure that the plan is owned by the people themselves. It’s not from the top but should be a bottoms-up approach because we want to focus on the human side,” Task Force Paglig-on chairman Baltazar Tribunalo said.

Two days ago Tribunalo, a disaster preparedness expert, was appointed by Cebu Gov. Hilario Davide III as Cebu’s “rehabilitation czar.”

As task force chairman Tribunalo is mandated to steer reconstruction efforts in northern Cebu.

He said there should be mutual understanding between the beneficiaries, the local and national government and foreign groups who plan to provide rehabilitation aid.

Tribunalo, who worked with the United Nations (UN) team that responded to major calamities such as the 2004 tsunami in Indonesia, said cultivating preparedness starts within each family.

“The local government units (LGUs) should have disaster preparedness as their top priority. No other way to do it but allocate funds for it and train families. When a storm hits, members of a family should already have a contingency plan,” he said.

The task force is made up of the Provincial Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council (PDRRMC) and nine clusters focused on recovery of different sectors.

Before being a consultant of the Cebu provincial government, Trubunalo was Plan International’s country program advisor on child-centered climate and disaster-risk management. Correspondent Peter L. Romanillos