NQUIRER VISAYAS FILE PHOTO
An alliance of survivors of Super Typhoon “Yolanda” (international name: Haiyan) on Sunday lamented the lack of permanent shelters and the presence of “small and cramped” bunkhouses almost two years after the disaster pummeled the Visayas.
The group People Surge called Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) Secretary Dinky Soliman a liar for supposedly promising that there would no longer be bunkhouses in Tacloban City by the end of October this year.
“On the last day of October, People Surge visited the IPI bunkhouse at Caibaan, one of the bunkhouses in Tacloban. What we witnessed were more or less 400 families still living in bunkhouses. Dinky Soliman broke another promise to the hundreds of families who have long been waiting for permanent shelter more than they could tolerate,” said Marissa Cabaljao, People Surge Secretary-General.
“Since January 2014, the residents were promised that it would only take six months for the permanent shelter to be completed. Six months passed and another six months came to pass. Two years since Yolanda, what they got were only empty promises and false hopes,” she added.
Cabaljao said Soliman’s “chronic lie” was aimed at hiding the true state of Yolanda survivors.
“This time, Soliman got the nerve to declare that there will no longer be bunkhouses in Tacloban by the end of October only to find out that this is a chronic lie,” Cabaljao said, recalling that the DSWD chief also supposedly declared last year that there will no longer be tent houses in Tacloban.
“Soliman deliberately wants to cover-up the state of Yolanda survivors by her declaration. As if she could pacify the dissent of Yolanda survivors by the promise of relocation, Yolanda survivors’ actual experiences tell that relocation is snail-paced,” she added.
Citing data from the National Housing Authority, Cabaljao said only 534 out of the 13,801 targeted permanent houses have been built by the government as of September this year.
Slamming the government’s “slow and inefficient” rehabilitation, Cabaljao said Soliman, with her giving of “false hopes,” was insensitive to the true plight of Yolanda survivors, particularly bunkhouse dwellers.