Aquino administration still assessing damage left by ‘Yolanda’

Presidential spokesman Edwin Lacierda. INQUIRER FILE PHOTO

MANILA, Philippines—Three weeks after Supertyphoon “Yolanda” (Haiyan) dealt a crippling blow to the central Philippines, the Aquino administration has yet to have a firm grasp of the full extent of the damage  wrought by one of the strongest storms to ever hit land.

As of late Friday afternoon, President Benigno Aquino was still meeting with the full Cabinet to ascertain whether his administration would need to scale up funding for the “Yolanda Recovery and Rehabilitation Palan.”

“The President and the Cabinet continue to discuss the details of the critical immediate interventions on the Yolanda Rehabilitation and Recovery Plan which includes shelter and resettlement, infrastructure, livelihood and social services,” Aquino’s spokesman, Edwin Lacierda, said in reply to reporters questions.

Lacierda disclosed that the Cabinet was just beginning to discuss the effects of Yolanda, which first made landfall on November 8 in Guiuan, Eastern Samar, and exited the Philippine Area of Responsibility the following day after making five other landfalls.

“The first part of the agenda was the presentation by (Science) Secretary Mario Montejo of a the storm surge simulation, particularly on what happened to Regions 6,7, 8 (which includes) Tacloban,” said Lacierda.

The simulation would help “update the list of the most severely affected municipalities and cities as priority areas for rehabilitation and reconstruction,” said Communications Secretary Herminio Coloma.

Yolanda flattened entire communities in the central Philippines and left at least 5,200 people dead.

In the face of the year’s biggest disaster, the government faces the task of sustaining the provision of relief to hundreds of thousands of survivors as well as rebuilding the devastated provinces.

The President has asked Congress for an initial amount of P14.5 billion in supplemental budget to fund the massive rehabilitation of central Philippines. This will be on top of the P2.268-trillion national budget for 2014 which was approved on second reading by the Senate early this week.

But the Senate, anticipating a much heavier budgetary requirement for rebuilding Yolanda-stricken provinces, has already included P100 billion for the reconstruction of the provinces destroyed by the earthquake and Yolanda.

On Wednesday, Aquino “approved in principle many of the items” included in the “Yolanda Recovery and Rehabilitation Plan,” which was presented during a Cabinet meeting that day.

The plan, which has been drafted by a Cabinet cluster headed by Socioeconomic Planning Secretary Arsenio Balisacan, will cover three phases: provision of immediate assistance to affected areas, expansion of initiatives and programs in the medium term, and full recovery and rehabilitation in the long term.

In that Cabinet meeting, the President asked Balisacan and other members of the Cabinet “for more specific details before providing formal approval,” said Lacierda.

Thus, the Cabinet met again on Friday  “to present further refinements to the plan, especially to the immediate actions to be taken,” said Lacierda.

In a separate briefing for reporters, Coloma talked of “critical immediate actions” that would be prioritized in the rehabilitation program in the aftermath of Yolanda.

“As stated yesterday by Secretary (Florencio) Abad in the House hearing on the supplemental budget, the proposed outlay is P38.8 billion pesos. Nearly 80 percent is for the reconstruction of destroyed or damaged homes and repair of classrooms, hospitals, public markets and other public facilities such as town halls and government offices,” he said.

According to Coloma, livelihood assistance for farmers and fishermen has also been prioritized due to the extreme damage to crops and coconut trees and the disruption of fishing activities in the typhoon’s aftermath.

The Department of Education has asked faculty and students to report to their respective schools on Monday, but deputy presidential spokesperson Abigail Valte clarified  that regular classes were not yet expected to resume.

Quoting Education Secretary Armin Luistro, she said that “this would not be a formal opening” or resumption of classes, but a “way of checking” the plight of the students affected by Yolanda.

The government needs to ascertain “who are those who need help and what (assistance should) be extended to them,” she said.

Valte mentioned a proposal by the local government to synchronize the resumption of classes in high school and elementary levels with the “opening” of tertiary classes on January 15, 2014.

“We just want to see or assess how many of our teachers need assistance, and to know what the students still need,” she said.

According to Valte, some 4,400 classrooms need to be replaced after they were heavily damaged by Yolanda.

With the help of teachers, DepEd will have a systematic way of assessing the needs and condition of students and their families, she said.

“It’s more of, really, a headcount (of the teachers and students) to establish the breadth of the (destruction) when it comes to the public schools that have been affected,” she said.