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MANILA, Philippines—Responding to reports of over a thousand bodies still unburied nearly two months after Supertyphoon “Yolanda” hit Tacloban City, Malacañang on Tuesday assured the public the government’s disaster-response structure remained “in place.”
“[The] structure is in place,” said Communications Secretary Herminio Coloma, referring to the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council (NDRRMC).
Coloma said local government units (LGUs) were “accountable to [the] national organization],” when he was asked about the delivery of aid and rehabilitation to areas ravaged by Yolanda on Nov. 8.
“Mayors and local officials are still subject to DILG [Department of Interior and Local Government] discipline,” he said in a text message to reporters.
One concern was the delay in the identification and burial of more than a thousand bodies purportedly left rotting in one barangay (village) just outside Tacloban City.
Coloma said the National Bureau of Investigation and the Department of Health were “primarily responsible for identifying and burying bodies in coordination with the LGUs.”
The Cabinet official earlier promised to look into the matter when told about it during his weekly media briefing which was aired over Radyo ng Bayan on Sunday.
“Perhaps we need to verify the situation that we’re seeing and know the bigger explanation because there are agencies responsible for these matters,” he said in Filipino.
“We will find out what the agencies concerned have to say,” he added. “What I can say is there is already a program for these things and based on the reports that we got, the authorities were not neglecting [the cadavers].”
The man in charge of the government’s overall rehabilitation effort is former Sen. Panfilo Lacson, who was given Cabinet rank early in December.
Under Memorandum Order 62, President Aquino instructed all government offices and “instrumentalities” to “render full assistance and cooperation to the presidential assistant [Lacson] as may be required to carry out his functions.”
Lacson will act as “overall manager and coordinator of rehabilitation, recovery and reconstruction efforts of government departments, agencies and instrumentalities in the affected areas, to the extent allowed by law.”
“Secretary Lacson’s main task is reconstruction,” Coloma said, noting that the Department of Social Welfare and Development “ensures that those still in evacuation centers will get food packs.”
The Department of Public Works and Highways is in charge of constructing bunkhouses as temporary shelters for typhoon victims.—With an AFP report