Sendong victims wants houses to start a new life

LIGAN CITY – “We have enough food and clothing assistance. What we need is a house so we can start a new life,” said Teresita Ragasajo, 71, whose family lost their house and mini-grocery store from the flood brought by tropical storm Sendong.

Her husband still missing, she hopes to rebuild their livelihood along with the only child who stays with her who is also searching for a missing husband and daughter.

Ragasajo dreads the thought of going back to Bayug Island where she raised five children with husband Arcenio since 1959.

At the start of 2012, the local government hopes to address the longing of flood evacuees such as Ragasajo. Underway is the building of a 15-hectare subdivision in Santa Elena village where some of the flood evacuees will be resettled.

The land is presently owned by the bankrupt National Steel Corporation (NSC), which is under receivership. The local government hopes to acquire the land through a dacion en pago arrangement to settle some of NSC’s outstanding tax liabilities. Dacion en pago refers to the mode of extinguishing an obligation whereby the debtor alienates in favor of the creditor property for the satisfaction of monetary obligation.

On Thursday, a team of geologists from the Mines and Geosciences Bureau (MGB) of the environment department gave nod on the suitability of the site for housing considering its being free from geohazards.

On Friday morning, the local government’s Housing and Resettlement Office convened a team of design engineers and architects to map out a subdivision plan.

City information officer Melvin Anggot said the subdivision plan is expected to be completed within a week, along with other legal requisites like housing and land use clearance, certification of geohazard risk-free, and Philippine Coconut Authority clearance to cut the coconut trees in the covered area.

Earlier, Mayor Lawrence Cruz emphasized that any relocation effort must be “a permanent solution” to the housing needs of the flood evacuees.

The resettlement plan will be based on the core shelter standards set by the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD), that is, a house of 60-square meter floor area within an 80-square meter lot.

DSWD funding assistance is based on a pegged cost of P70,000 per housing unit. For each, the Iligan local government will pitch in additional P30,000 “to ensure these would come out decent,” said Anggot.

Several agencies and organizations were identified to be tapped for building the houses, among these Gawad Kalinga (GK), Habitat for Humanity and EcoWeb.

Cruz said he has requested that the GK Bayani Challenge set for April 2012 be done by January to respond to the housing emergency arising form the flood. The house-building activity originally targeted to erect 300 houses in Bayug Island for ejected informal settlers and fire victims. But after the flood, Cruz called off a resettlement effort in the site.

EcoWeb has started producing lumbers out of the ‘killer logs’ scattered at the Iligan coasts.

Anggot disclosed that the upcoming results of a geohazard mapping done by the University of the Philippines National Institute for Geological Sciences will guide the local government’s decision on which areas of the city will be declared as “no-go zones” for settlements.

Those who were left homeless by the flood and come from these geologically hazardous areas will be prevented from settling back there and would be told to resettle, Anggot added.

Largely hit by the flood were the villages of Santa Felomina, Upper Hinaplanon, Hinaplanon Proper and Santiago.

Anggot said families whose houses were “totally washed out” and who used to live in geohazardous areas will be priority for relocation.

Apart from the Santa Elena land, the local government is also eyeing other relocation sites such as a two-hectare lot in Santa Felomina village, and an eight-hectare property owned by NSC in Suarez village, Anggot added.

As of Dec. 29, the City Social Welfare and Development Office accounted some 4,385 “totally damaged” houses in 28 barangays as a result of the flood. About 10,817 more houses were “partially damaged.”

In all, the damaged houses are estimated to cost over half-a-billion pesos, although local officials said this may be a “very conservative” valuation of the lost properties.

In the runup to the reopening of classes June 3, Anggot said evacuees staying in classrooms will be transferred to so-called “tent cities” while awaiting the completion of their resettlement homes.

Susan Perante, officer-in-charge of the Ubaldo Laya Elementary School, said she can allow the evacuees to use the classrooms as sleeping quarters in the evening.

This would require that another makeshift structure be made inside the vacant space within the school compound where the evacuees would stay during day time.

Perante also stressed the need for daily garbage collection in schools used as evacuation centers.

“By then, our population would double,” she said.

The school has over 1,000 pupils; it currently caters to about 1,200 evacuees mostly from Bayug Island.Ryan D. Rosauro, Inquirer Mindanao