P65-B rehab plans OKd for ‘Yolanda’-hit areas

SUPERTYPHOON “Yolanda” survivors continue to be housed in tents that were donated by United Nations relief agencies. An overnight fire razed a tent that was being used as temporary shelter by the survivors, killing a woman and six of her children. AP

CEBU CITY—The Office of the Presidential Assistant for Rehabilitation and Recovery has approved P65.2 billion in rehabilitation plans for areas devastated by Super Typhoon “Yolanda” in Tacloban City and Samar, northern Cebu and Leyte provinces.

But typhoon survivors living in tents, particularly in Tacloban, which is considered ground zero, will have to wait for at least six more months before they can be relocated to their permanent homes.

National Housing Authority (NHA) general manager Chito Cruz said the agency was targeting about 6,000 to 7,000 permanent housing units  in Tacloban by year-end, about half of the total target of 14,000.

In the meantime, those in tents will be moved within the month to nipa houses as their “transitional houses” while waiting for the NHA to finish constructing the permanent houses, said Social Welfare Secretary Dinky Soliman. She said the construction of the nipa houses in Tacloban would start next week.

Soliman admitted that building the transitional houses would mean double in expenses for the government, especially because the construction of permanent houses is on the way.

“But the welfare of the people cannot be compromised because if we wait for permanent shelters to be finished, we are putting the people in a dangerous situation,” she said in a text message to the Inquirer. “It is the rainy season. The tents will not shield the people,” she added.

Presidential Assistant for Rehabilitation and Recovery Panfilo Lacson, Soliman, Cruz and other Cabinet secretaries were in Cebu City on Friday afternoon for the presentation of the rehabilitation plans for Cebu, Leyte, Tacloban and Samar during a five-hour, closed-door meeting.

The plans were presented by Governors Hilario Davide III of Cebu, Sharee Ann Tan of Samar and Leopoldo Dominico Petilla of Leyte, and Tacloban City Mayor Alfred Romualdez.

Also in the meeting were Budget Secretary Butch Abad, Public Works Secretary Rogelio Singson, Interior Secretary Mar Roxas  and Socioeconomic Planning Secretary Arsenio Balisacan.

After the presentation, the secretaries signed the individual rehabilitation plans, which will  be presented to President Aquino for approval.

The budget breakdown is as follows: P25 billion for Tacloban City, P22 billion for Leyte, P6 billion for Samar and P12.2 billion for northern Cebu.

“We did a bottoms-up approach. We encouraged local government executives to formulate and craft their own rehabilitation plans,” Lacson said in a news conference after the meeting. He said they were still waiting for the plans of Aklan, Antique, Capiz, Biliran, Negros Occidental and Palawan provinces.

Abad said P65.2 billion would be taken from the budgets for recovery and reconstruction under the General Appropriations Act of 2014. He said they were expecting the total rehabilitation cost for Yolanda-devastated areas to reach at least P105 billion.

But he said there was enough money to fund the rehabilitation. Possible fund sources include supplementary budget approved by Congress, calamity funds and unprogrammed funds.

To monitor the spending, Abad said the Department of Budget and Management had opened a portal on their website  where the public can check the progress of the rehabilitation projects and how the funds are used.

Cruz, however, admitted that their main obstacle was  acquiring the lots for resettlement sites because they had to clear it first with the Environmental Management Bureau and the Department of Science and Technology to ensure that these were located in safe areas.

At present, 50 bunkhouses have been built in Tacloban for 1,000 families that lost their houses.

Soliman said they were fast-tracking the transfer of the remaining 700 families in the tent city following a fire that killed a woman and six children in Barangay (village) Costa Brava in San Jose District, Tacloban, last week.