ILIGAN CITY, Philippines—“We have enough food and clothing assistance. What we need is a house so we can start a new life,” so said Teresita Ragasajo, 71, whose family lost their house and mini-grocery store to the flash floods unleashed by Tropical Storm Sendong.
Her husband still missing, she hopes to rebuild their livelihood with the help of 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 yearning for new and permanent homes of flood evacuees such as Ragasajo. Underway is the building of a 15-hectare subdivision in the village of Santa Elena where some of the evacuees will be resettled.
The land is owned by the bankrupt National Steel Corporation, which is under receivership. The local government hopes to acquire the land through a “dacion en pago” —payment in kind— arrangement to settle some of NSC’s outstanding tax liabilities.
On Thursday, a team of geologists from the Mines and Geosciences Bureau gave its 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 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 clearances, geohazard-free certification, and Philippine Coconut Authority clearance to cut the coconut trees in the area.
Earlier, Mayor Lawrence Cruz said 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, that is, a house with 60 square meters of 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 to build the houses, among them the Gawad Kalinga, 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 from the flood. The house-building activity originally targeted to erect 300 houses on 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 on the Iligan coast.
Anggot said 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 “no-go zones” for settlement.
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 elsewhere, Anggot added.
Anggot said families whose houses were “totally washed out” and who used to live in geohazardous areas will be given 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 and an eight-hectare property owned by NSC in Suarez village, Anggot added.
As of December 29, the City Social Welfare and Development Office counted some 4,385 “totally damaged” houses in 28 barangays as a result of the flood. About 10,817 more houses were “partially damaged.”