Looting also reported in Southern Leyte, Samar
A survivor writes a message on their port to call for help at typhoon-ravaged Tacloban city, Leyte province central Philippines. AP FILE PHOTO
MAASIN CITY, Philippines—Local officials in Samar and Southern Leyte are on alert following reports that looting was taking place in these provinces as well.
Southern Leyte Gov. Roger Mercado said he deployed policemen to various points of entry to the province to thwart lawless elements while Mayor Ronald Aquino of Calbayog City in Samar province said he ordered to setting up of police checkpoints to prevent looters from taking advantage of the situation, which has been worsened by the absence of electricity in the whole of Eastern Visayas.
In the provincial capital of Samar, Catbalogan City, officials asked the police to secure warehouses containing relief goods, including rice from the National Food Authority, after receiving reports of looting in the town of Sta. Margarita.
According to Mercado, the Southern Leyte governor, a policeman had apprised him about how security personnel at the Gaisano Capital department store in the town of Sogod had thwarted a group of looters.
But a woman told the government station dySL that two men and a woman managed to divest her of P1,700 in food purchases right after she came out of the department store at 10 a.m. on Tuesday.
Article continues after this advertisementThere was also a report of a robbery in the town of Hinday but Mercado said it had yet to be verified.
Article continues after this advertisementSenior Superintendent Armando Bolalin, police provincial director, said that around 140 inmates had escaped from the Leyte Provincial Jail in Tacloban and they were on the lookout for them.
Christine Caidic, a member of the Samar provincial disaster council and the province’s information officer, said the looting in the town of Sta. Margarita occurred on Tuesday after someone shouted that a tidal wave was coming. This caused residents to flee to high ground only to find out, after realizing the warnings were a hoax, t6hat their homes had been ransacked.
She said provincial officials had asked the Philippine Army and the Philippine National Police for personnel to secure warehouses of the National Food Authority but nothing has been done.
“It seems that everyone is in Tacloban. They don’t love us here. They only love Tacloban. It is frustrating,” she said in phone interview.
Inspector Romuel Nacar, information officer of the Philippine National police command in Eastgern Samar, downplayed reports of looting, saying it had been contained, especially in Tacloban, the hard-hit provincial capital of Leyte, where about 800 policemen had been deployed.
Nacar said policemen have been conducting checkpoints and mobile patrols and that vital installations were being secured.
But residents of Baybay town in Leyte blamed the absence of local officials for the looting and hoarding of food supplies in Leyte.
Maloth Galenzoga, a businesswoman and a defeated mayoral candidate, said the food shortage would have been avoided if both the provincial and national governments had immediately distributed relief foods and needed supplies.
Due to the food shortage, she added, even the towns that were not badly affected by the typhoon had to reckon with looters.
“It is chaotic in Tacloban because the concern of the people was not addressed. Baybay is also affected because many steal our food,” she said.
She lamented that Leyte Gov. Dominico Petilla and Vice Gov. Carlo Loreto have been staying in Cebu since the typhoon struck on Friday, preventing the use of the province’s calamity funds for relief operations.
“We are like a ship being abandoned by our captain,” she said at a press conference in Cebu City on Wednesday.
Galenzoga went to Cebu to get in touch with the office of the Sen. Alan Peter Cayetano and the JCI Cebu Inc. to get more relief goods for Baybay.
While only 40 percent of Baybay was affected, Galensoga said, the entire city was suffering from lack of food and other supplies.
Like many parts of Eastern Visayas, Baybay has not received any relief goods from either the provincial or the national government. Reports from Doris C. Bongcac, Jani Arnaiz, Jennifer Allegado and Connie E. Fernandez, Inquirer Visayas
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