Shelters in Bayug temporary, says Iligan City gov’t

ILIGAN CITY—The makeshift shelters in “no-build zones” in flood-hit areas like Bayug Island here are just temporary, the city government said.

The Mines and Geosciences Bureau recently recommended that Bayug Island, some 200 hectares of alluvial deposits accumulated through the centuries, be declared off-limits for settlement.

Earlier, the local government pronounced that those still living in what would eventually be declared as “no-build zones” should be relocated.

“No doubt these are temporary houses. The families staying there are bound to be transferred to permanent shelters that would hopefully restart their lives,” Melvin Anggot, the city information officer, said.

Discomfort from overcrowded evacuation centers and continuing uncertainties about housing options for homeless flood survivors prompted families like that of Avelino Merino to decide to go back to their flood-ravaged villages.

Merino had built a makeshift shelter, with wooden posts and tarpaulin as wall and roof, near his mud-buried house on Bayug Island. Merino said he and his family would eventually settle back to their house once it is totally cleared of mud, and the repairs done.

Since the tragedy, the Merino family, along with 30 others, has not left Bayug Island. At the height of the flood, they climbed the trees or the roof of their houses to be spared from the rampaging waters.

Permanent relocation

Of 314 families on the island, only about 150 have so far been accounted for. Today, about 60 houses are left standing but only a third are habitable.

But the city government said those who are staying on Bayug Island would eventually have to go.

As of now, some 300 families have been identified as the first to be transferred to a permanent relocation site. They are expected to occupy the 20-square-meter houses built by Gawad Kalinga in Santa Elena village by February 25.

The houses are funded by the social welfare department’s core shelter assistance program and the National Housing Authority.

But apart from relocation, the local government is also mulling assisting for “onsite rebuilding” families whose houses sit in areas not identified as no-build zones, said Anggot.

Anggot said the local government is trying to be sensitive to the housing needs of the families, like size of household and livelihood considerations. He said the local government had realized that there is “no one-size-fits-all” solution to the housing problem for the evacuees.

He said large families may not be fitted in the Department of Social Welfare and Development’s 20-sqm units.

The city government is also considering the evacuees’ livelihood, seeing to it that relocating them would not bring them farther from their work.—Ryan D. Rosauro