Mayor feels vindicated by UN review of rehab

TACLOBAN CITY—Mayor Alfred Romualdez said on Monday he felt vindicated by a statement of UN rapporteur Chaloka Beyani on the government’s “inadequate” response to the rehabilitation needs of families who survived the destruction wrought by Supertyphoon “Yolanda” (international name: Haiyan) in 2013.

Tacloban, considered Ground Zero of the world’s strongest typhoon to make landfall on Nov. 8, 2013, is still on the recovery stage with thousands of families still living in bunkhouses or temporary shelters, Romualdez said. Officials estimate that 6,300 people were killed during the storm.

Beyani visited families still living in the shelters last week, including those in Barangay San Jose, the city’s worst-hit area.

“While the government is to be commended in terms of its immediate responses, its attention to ensuring sustainable durable solutions for IDPs (internally displaced persons) remains inadequate to date,” he said in a statement posted on the UN website.

Blamed over delay

On several occasions, Romualdez was blamed by President Aquino himself and other national officials over the delay in the transfer of families to permanent shelters and other aspects of rehabilitation in Tacloban. The mayor had even figured in a debate with Interior Secretary Mar Roxas.

He said he had done all he could to ensure that Tacloban would recover immediately, but due to limited resources, he could only do so much as businesses had ceased to operate.

“I just accepted what they (national government) gave to us. But the thing is, what they gave to us were not the direct needs of the people,” he said.

Romualdez had earlier proposed a P20-billion “Marshall Plan” to ensure the speedy rehabilitation of Tacloban, patterned after the scheme that helped the economies of Europe to recover after World War II. The plan was rejected by the national government.

The mayor chided the delay in the release of the so-called comprehensive recovery and rehabilitation plan, amounting to P167.8 billion, which was just approved last year.

He said he even offered a city-owned lot in Barangay Kawayan the northern part of Tacloban as site for permanent shelters, but the National Housing Authority (NHA) said its hilly area was not feasible as it could be costly to develop it. Now, permanent shelters are being built for survivors by several private foundations.

Still in bunkhouses

The NHA was supposed to construct 14,000 houses for families who lost their houses due to Yolanda, but it has so far managed to put up only 2,000 units in various stages. More than 2,000 families are still living in bunkhouses or dwellings made of nipa shingles and coconut lumber.

Romualdez said that he was not even consulted by the national government when it constructed the bunkhouses. He said that during the first anniversary of Yolanda, he refused to join a ribbon-cutting ceremony for a shelter program of the government, noting that there were no basic facilities, such as water and electricity supplies.