THE budget watchdog Social Watch Philippines on Tuesday urged President Rodrigo Duterte to immediately start spending money that is already appropriated for the victims of Super Typhoon “Yolanda” who have become even poorer three years after the disaster.
“The implementation of Yolanda recovery projects is agonizingly slow and miserably falling short. The poor are far from building back and, in fact, [are] poorer now than before the disaster,” said Isagani Serrano, co-convener of SWP.
Citing the report of National Economic and Development Authority, Serrano said as of March 2016, the completion rate of houses for the Yolanda victims is only 9 percent and that 42 percent of the target housing units have not even started.
Only 19,330 out of the 205,128 intended to provide shelter to the victims were completed and 98,393 housing units are still being constructed, Serrano lamented.
SWP is conducting Public Expenditure Tracking Survey (PETS) of Yolanda reconstruction and rehabilitation efforts in select municipalities in Leyte, specifically, Tolosa, MacArthur, Dulag, Mayorga, and Tacloban City in its resettlement program.
The study was also conducted in Basey and Salcedo in Samar.
He said the figures in the Neda report reflect the situation in these areas as only 8 percent of the housing requirements of the displaced communities in these municipalities have been completed.
“If genuine change is coming, there is no better evidence of this than to see this reflected in the national budget. It should be President Duterte’s starting budget for eradicating poverty and achieving sustainable development,” said Serrano, shortly after Budget Secretary Benjamin Diokno submitted the P3.35-trillion spending plan for 2017 to Congress.
Some P170 billion has been earmarked for the reconstruction and rehabilitation of the Yolanda-ravaged provinces. Of the amount, some P82 billion had been released by the government.
According to Serrano, the PETS showed livelihood assistance to Yolanda survivors and making sure they have shelter and less vulnerable to disaster are also lagging.
“We are rebuilding communities not to bring them back to the state of poverty and vulnerability previous to Yolanda. The reconstruction and rehabilitation should rebuild the communities, reduce their vulnerability and become more resilient to the negative impact of extreme weather events that will hit them in the future,” Serrano added.
The “emergency” nature of the Emergency Shelter Assistance (ESA) lost its essence as these were dispensed one to two years after the calamity because of bureaucracy and political influences, Serrano said.
The ESA funds were downloaded to the Department of Social Welfare and Development Regional Office in Region VIII only on May 12 and 21, 2015 and were released to the local government units or LGUs from May 29, 2015 to September 30, 2015, he said.
The LGUs released the ESA to the beneficiaries from July 10 to December 2015, except for one LGU that immediately released the ESA the day after the fund was received, Serrano added.
“The delayed release of funds affected the implementation of livelihood programs of the Department of Agriculture [DA] and the Philippine Coconut Authority [PCA], reportedly, because of unliquidated cash advances,” Serrano said.
SWP said the newly released 2015 statistics in Region VIII attest to this. The broad-based growth was not realized due to the limitations in agriculture and fisheries sector, the budget watchdog said.
“President Duterte has astutely tapped into the people’s long-felt frustration for change, one that will make a positive difference in their lives. The 10-point agenda of the government is a welcome start, but as responsible and patriotic citizens, we will engage this agenda with a view to making it even more responsive to the needs of our people, especially for the poor and socially excluded,” said Marivic Raquiza, SWP co-convener.
Raquiza said all good intentions and plans, often rise or fall on the basis of adequate provision of funding.