PRESIDENTIAL candidate Senator Grace Poe said Friday she was enraged by reports that the construction of the bunkhouses for the victims of Super Typhoon “Yolanda” victims was tainted with corruption.
Yolanda, the strongest storm in history to make landfall, slammed into Eastern Visayas on Nov. 8, 2013, leaving more than 7,000 people dead and dislocating hundreds of thousands more.
“For almost a million pesos, which the government reportedly spent to construct each bunkhouse, we expected better than this,” Poe said.
She said the government built 203 bunkhouses that were each divided into 24 rooms with four toilets, two showers and one common kitchen.
She said each room measured a mere eight square meters was intended to house a family with an average size of six members.
Poe made her statement even as an ally of the ruling Liberal Party slammed her for her allegedly “confusing” campaign platform focusing on the “continuity” of reforms.
“With all due respect to the late FPJ [Fernando Poe Jr., Grace’s father], what did he really start when he was never elected into office? He was not really elected President so whatever he planned to do did not take shape,” Roxas’ spokesman Rep. Ibarra Gutierrez said in a television interview.
“Poe’s claims are confusing. They are neither administration nor opposition.”
Poe said residents had been complaining that the bunkhouses were substandard.
She also noted that, two years after Yolanda battered Eastern Visayas, the survivors were still living in pitiful conditions in bunkhouses and temporary shelters.
She asked where the Yolanda funds had gone and criticized the delay in the release of funds for the rehabilitation of the areas devastated by the typhoon. She said the survivors would not have had to suffer long had the government response been swift and efficient.
“Donations poured in from here and abroad after the disaster. How were these donations used?” Poe said.
“If the government had a clear and effective rehabilitation plan, why are Yolanda’s survivors living in such appalling conditions?”
The P167.9-billion funding requirement under the Comprehensive Rehabilitation and Recovery Plan was approved by President Aquino in October 2014, two weeks before the tragedy’s first anniversary.
However, only P84 billion have been released over a period of two years, according to former rehabilitation Chief Panfilo Lacson.
The Budget department also admitted that the budget included appropriations for the areas affected by other disasters before Yolanda.
Several local government units, particularly Tacloban, also claim that, aside from the delayed release, there has also been no clear breakdown of how the released funds were spent.
“Problems with funding were further aggravated by poor coordination between and among implementing agencies,” Poe said.
“It’s been two years and only half of the funds have been released, and the sad part is we don’t even know if these funds reached the LGUs and the survivors.”
