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Thursday, March 28, 2024

‘Yolanda’ housing finished by Dec.

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NATIONAL Housing Authority General Manager Marcelino Escalada Jr. on Friday assured ‘‘Yolanda’’ victims that the agency will be able to complete almost 30,000 housing units for them by Christmas.

In an interview, Escalada said the agency has already completed the land development and construction of 29,661 permanent housing units ready for occupancy for thousands of beneficiaries, mostly informal settlers, who have been staying at the bunkhouses and other temporary shelters since ‘‘Yolanda’’ flattened Eastern Visayas on Nov. 8, 2013 and killed more than 6,000 people.

“That’s a tall order of President Rodrigo Duterte—to remove the survivors out of the temporary shelters and to provide them with permanent ones,” he told the Manila Standard.

With a housing demand of 205,125 units in the typhoon-affected provinces—Palawan, Masbate, Aklan, Antique, Capiz, Iloilo, Negros Occidental, Cebu, Leyte, Tacloban City, Eastern Samar, Samar, Biliran, Southern Leyte, Dinagat Islands and Caraga region, only 4,278 units have been distributed and occupied, according to the agency’s recent status of physical accomplishments.

Some 20,287 units have been “partially or substantially completed” but 131,901 permanent shelters have yet to be built.

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Last Nov. 8, Duterte expressed dissatisfaction at the lack of help given to typhoon victims and the sorry state of the typhoon victims still staying at the bunkhouses.

He instructed Special Assistant for the Visayas Mike Dino to complete all government permanent housing programs in December, saying he would come back to Tacloban City in December.

As far as Tacloban City is concerned, its housing demand was estimated at 14,433 units with 2,669 partially or substantially completed units and 1,492 occupied units.

According to Escalada, the absence of land titles for possible sites of resettlements has been a major stumbling block that derails rehabilitation efforts in ‘‘Yolanda’’-affected areas.

“We cannot just buy untitled lands, otherwise we will be sanctioned by Commission on Audit and be charged in court,” he said.

To address the land rights issue, the NHA has asked the President to sign an executive order to allow the agency employ the right-based tenurial instruments as an alternative of the Torrens system’s land titles.

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