Rice donation: Jailbirds join aid drive for storm survivors

Even with little food to spare, jail inmates in Cavite province chipped in to donate eight sacks of rice to the victims of Tropical Storms “Urduja” and “Vinta,” which devastated parts of Eastern Visayas and Mindanao.

The charity shown by the detainees of the Dasmariñas City Jail was complemented by personnel of the Bureau of Jail Management and Penology (BJMP) who donated 300 cans of sardines and 360 packs of noodles.

According to Dasmariñas City Jail warden Chief Insp. Rolando Badio, the inmates volunteered to contribute food to the typhoon victims.

It did not sit well with the detainees that they had food to eat three times a day while the victims were left with almost nothing after floods destroyed crops and properties in their areas, Badio said.

The food items have been delivered to the Department of Social Welfare and Development’s (DSWD) national resource operations center in Pasay City.

BJMP personnel, as well as students undergoing the Jail Basic Recruit Course at the National Jail Management and Penology Training Institute, also volunteered to repack goods for the typhoon victims.

“We want to share the message that aside from giving food items to help our countrymen, we can also give some of our time to help the agencies conducting relief operations,” Badio said.

The United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef) and the Catholic Church have pitched in to ease the sufferings of the typhoon victims.

Unicef said prepositioned emergency relief supplies—bottled water, sanitation supplies, water tanks, water-purification tablets, jerry cans and tents—were ready to be dispatched to calamity-stricken areas.

The UN agency said it was particularly concerned about the plight of people in Marawi City who had been living in tents after they were displaced by the five months of fighting that ended in October.

Vinta destroyed the evacuees’ tents, according to Unicef.

“Our heart goes out to the children and families affected and made vulnerable by storm Vinta,” said Lotta Sylwander, Unicef’s head of operations in the Philippines.

The National Secretariat for Social Action (NSSA), the Catholic Church’s social action arm, appealed to the faithful over Radio Veritas to help it raise P5.8 milion for its relief efforts in five provinces.

Donations will cover the purchase of food packs and hygiene kits for some 3,000 affected families, according to the NSSA, also known as Caritas Philippines. —With reports from Dona Z. Pazzibugan and Julie M. Aurelio