De-bunked house controversy

Most people think that things are already back to normal in Tacloban City. NO they are not. I learned recently that contrary to the rosy picture being projected by Malacañang, only 3 to 5 percent of Tacloban City, which is a highly urbanized city, has electricity. Estimates point out that power won’t come back until after a year, or because P-Noy dislikes Romualdez and Tacloban, maybe after P-Noy has left office. If this happens, Tacloban City will lag behind while the hometown or stronghold of a P-Noy ally flourishes and takes over Tacloban’s premier city status in Eastern Visayas. Could that be a plan?

Given the inability of the DOE and NEA to deliver the much-needed electricity, there is now the suggestion to open Eastern Visayas to the private sector power generators who think profit and not politics. This will also free up the region from the economic stranglehold of one political family who “controls” water and electricity. I guess this will be another issue that will go to the Supreme Court.

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The dreamers at the DOTC are talking about a new air conditioned terminal for Tacloban which of course, in keeping with all other DOTC projects, will never happen until the P-Noy administration becomes no more than a bad dream we finally wake up from in 2016. What Mayor Alfred Romualdez should do is simply appeal to some international aid agency or foreign government to build and donate a system that would give Tacloban airport 24-hour operating capability. The wish list would be quite short and simple: Instrument landing system, approach lights, and power generators. This will immediately bring back the 19 flights a day that landed on Tacloban Airport before Yolanda. Don’t hold your breath waiting for the government to get this done, because it takes them a year to approve a design group, while it took the US Marines 48 hours to fix and run Tacloban airport day and night. 

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Even before the first batch of bunkhouses were to be ceremonially turned over to P-Noy, I already knew that foreign NGO representatives were against the whole thing because the bunkhouses did not conform to internationally accepted standards for temporary shelters which they reportedly shared with contractors. I was told that there was a risk that the matter could become an embarrassing situation if the media were to raise the matter with P-Noy.

I told an official in Malacañang about it, who discussed the matter with DPWH Secretary Babes Singson. I was told that the DPWH had constructed the bunkhouses based on a previous template used after Typhoon Sendong in Cagayan De Oro and Iligan as well as in Typhoon Pablo and that the bunkhouses served their purpose with no problems. He added that the DPWH had not received any official recommendations regarding “standards or design” for temporary shelters. He also said that once the DPWH received such design recommendations they would immediately take them into consideration.

Ideally, it might have been best if Malacañang had acknowledged the problem or took advantage of the situation by saying that those bunkhouses would be improved on and was just an emergency solution to the bigger problem of people having absolutely no protection from the elements (which they are now saying), but all that is now hindsight and why wake a sleeping dog that could bite your butt?

In an emergency situation and in the Philippine cultural context “a dog house” is better than a piece of tarp over your head. Those in charge clearly wanted to deliver some sort of relief, pronto! What Singson did not expect was that the contractors would make mini-slices of the bunkhouses so they can make it appear that they built more in order to collect more!

In the eyes of the experienced aid workers however, there is a science to relief and reconstruction, and it should not be compromised at the risk and expense of the victims. It “was” a case of everyone meaning well but ending up “mean as hell” at each other.  Ironic that shouting matches and strained relations have taken over what used to be one common effort: to help the victims.

I heard about another Mayor having a shouting match with a Cabinet secretary who reportedly shot back by saying “Kung gusto mo di wasakin na lang natin lahat nito” (If you wish, we can just trash all the bunkhouses now!) A few days earlier, Secretary Singson got so insulted about insinuations of corruption that he promised to resign if proven. In the mean time, some creative people have simply knocked a few walls down between the bunkhouses solving the problem by “using two to make one” ideal sized units. 

I strongly disapproved of the standard reaction of Cabinet members of offering to resign because that is not what is needed. What we want is to find the culprits and throw them to jail or offer them as punching bags to the would-be residents of the bunkhouses so they can get some stress debriefing of a physical kind.

While I am personally dissatisfied with the performance of the national government with its post Yolanda response, we all need to get a grip of ourselves and realize that throwing accusations of corruption now is not like throwing tomatoes to embarrass government. Allegations of corruption could bring the entire roof of international assistance down on our heads. What is at stake here are not just bunkhouses and political capital, what is at stake here is the trust and confidence, and the sympathy of people all over the world.

What needs to be done now is to exercise extreme prejudice against any guilty party, put them on public display and punish them as much as the law allows. Only by doing this can we prove to the world that there is integrity and true accountability in the matter. We already lost thousands upon thousand of lives because of Typhoon Yolanda. Please, let us not allow our honor and our reputation to be ruined as well.

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