Not just dole outs

ROME — We arrived here over the weekend under the weather, so to speak. I have runny nose and colds. It felt like we’re still in the Philippines because it’s been raining incessantly since we planed in. It looked as if we brought Pepeng along with us during this autumn season in Italy. Like in Manila, some of the obviously clogged drainage in this old city of Rome flooded some corner roads and streets.

We were already joking each other that we would have a Roman holiday indoors as it rains intermittently here. While cooling our heels in our hotel, Noel de Luna, a former media colleague who works at the Philippine embassy, visited us after he learned about our presence.

De Luna used to be a senior reporter of the defunct Business Day. He has been working here as the Philippine agricultural attaché for the past 14 years. He is also concurrently the deputy permanent representative of the Philippines to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), one of the United Nations (UN) agencies based here.

He informed us the FAO had dispatched a mission to the Philippines to assess the damages to the agriculture sector. The mission will determine how much and what kind of assistance could be immediately mobilized by FAO to help rehabilitate farms destroyed by the flood and help Filipino farmers recover from the calamity.

This is why, De Luna disclosed, it is very important that his immediate superior Department of Agriculture Secretary Arthur Yap must attend the scheduled World Food Summit taking place here on Nov. 16-18 to drum up the cause for Philippine agriculture. Most of those destroyed by Pepeng are the country’s so-called “food baskets” like Bulacan, Cagayan Valley, Isabela, Benguet, La Union, Ilocos Sur and Ilocos Norte. Rice fields have been washed out while other farms and crops ripe and ready for harvest were ruined by flood.

The Agriculture Secretary has sounded out the alarm for the government to start as soon as possible the reconstruction and rehabilitation of these flood-destroyed provinces. The estimated cost of typhoon damages to Philippine agriculture is fast turning into horrific numbers.

The World Food Program, also a Rome-based UN agency has been in the thick of emergency assistance to the Philippines, De Luna noted. After Ondoy and Pepeng struck a week apart, the WFP has delivered in batches 26,000 tons of rice and other food assistance for the flood victims all over the country.

The WFP has committed this amount of food assistance to feed an equivalent of at least one million Filipino calamity victims over the next three months. The food aid from the WFP is coursed through the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) and the National Disaster Coordinating Council (NDCC).

The WFP has also been responsible in sending to the Philippines three rescue and relief helicopters that the WFP will lend for three months to the NDCC. Two of the knockdown choppers, as I gathered, have already been delivered to Manila and are currently being put back together by the Philippine Air Force. The third one, as I understood, is on its way to Manila sent via a commercial cargo plane. 

In addition to this, the WFP has turned over to the Philippine embassy here, headed by Ambassador Philippe Lhuillier, seven of the 30 motorized rubber boats donated also to the NDCC. The remaining 23 units are in the process of delivery through commercial cargo planes.

Each of the motorized rubber boats donated by the WFP could carry as much as 20 people on board. Rubber boats figured most prominently as effective rescue transport at the height of the flash flood that inundated the cities of Marikina and Pasig in Metro Manila and Cainta in Rizal Province.

If there’s one source of optimism for the Philippines, De Luna cited, it is the fact that our country is a member of the WFP Executive Board. The Philippines was elected member of the WFP Executive Board for a term of three years that started in November 2007 until next month. De Luna said Yap’s forthcoming participation to the World Food Summit would also be an opportunity for the Philippines to actively campaign anew for its reelection for another term at the WFP Executive Board.

Before we left Manila, the government of Italy turned over close to quarter of a million Euro worth (about P15 million) of relief assistance to the flood victims of typhoons Ondoy and Pepeng. Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi — despite his own domestic unpopularity woes before his own people — was one of the world leaders who immediately heeded the flash emergency humanitarian relief appeal for the Philippines.

It was issued by the UN upon the official request of President Arroyo following a record number of deaths and devastation in Metro Manila and nearby provinces caused by the two typhoons. The President’s unpopularity rating among Filipinos, notwithstanding, her foreign travels at least paid off and is generating this much-needed international sympathy and support for the Philippines in times of disasters like these.

 Italian local newspapers are coming out everyday with reports on the two typhoons that killed more than 200 people in the Filippine, as the name of the Philippines is referred to here. After all, Italy is home to more than 200,000 overseas Filipinos workers — but only 60,000 are documented — whose families and relatives are perhaps among those who were seriously displaced by the typhoons, or even killed.

Meanwhile, Albay Gov. Joey Salceda has correctly underscored the need for the Philippines to organize and embark again on a private sector-led international reconstruction drive to ask help for the country’s recovery from these series of calamitous devastations. Being one of the economic advisers of President Arroyo, Salceda’s proposal counts a lot to bring sense to the government’s disaster response to avert the impact in the long run of such ruinous calamities that could further inflict harm to the nation’s economic welfare.  

Of course, this should not be just about dole outs but investing on the future of economic recovery that the Philippines can offer and share the gains out of such productive ventures with our friends in the international community. It had worked before and this should also prove effective again if handled well.