Epic failure
Almost P400 million in local and foreign cash donations intended for victims of Yolanda remain undistributed. They are locked up in the bank accounts of the DSWD, according to a scathing COA report. Well, at least the millions should be earning interest, although for whom nobody knows. Suffering a worse fate are the tons of relief goods that DSWD also failed to give away to the victims. According to the COA, they have all expired or are rotting away.
The COA describes the DSWD as an epic failure in its job of providing immediate relief to Yolanda victims. The supertyphoon, the strongest ever to hit land on record, struck the Visayas in 2013. Now it is close to the end of 2015. If there are still P400 million in local and foreign cash donations being stashed away in DSWD bank accounts and relief goods that have remained undistributed and are now spoiled or spoiling, that is not only epic failure -- it is criminal.
And by criminal, I do not just mean negligence. Negligence implies lack of intent. But when you do not distribute cash donations or relief goods intended for the victims of a typhoon that happened in 2013 when it is already almost 2016, that cannot be due to simple negligence. It is difficult to accept that for almost three years, it never occurred to DSWD that it still had millions of pesos in cash donations and tons of relief goods still undistributed to very specific beneficiaries.
This epic failure by DSWD cuts painfully in two ways. One, it deprived intended beneficiaries of the immediate relief that was legally and rightfully theirs, a deprivation that possibly could have resulted in a further loss of lives or prolonging of misery. Two, it betrayed the good intentions of those from here and abroad who swiftly responded with cash donations.
The cash donations and relief goods had a very specific purpose. They were all intended to alleviate the misery of those that went through this tragedy. They were not assembled and mobilized for the DSWD to dispense as it pleases. And in the very unlikely event that they were no longer needed, it is not up to the DSWD to devise other purposes for them. The specificity of their purpose obligated the DSWD to carry out the intent for which they were given.
Aside from the mantle of suspicion that now cloaks DSWD over its epic failure to distribute the cash donations and relief goods to Yolanda victims, this entire episode also puts to shame all Filipinos before the eyes of the world. Those who donated cash and relief items from all over the world cannot help but look at us as a people who cannot be trusted.
Worse, the global community may even regret having responded far more quickly than even the DSWD and the other Philippine government agencies did. What a shame it is for all of us. And to think that those who responded quickly with their cash and relief goods did so unbidden. They did not wait for the Philippine government to send out an SOS. By day two they were already at our doors with help. And this is what the DSWD did for them in return. What a shame.
But what is even more consternating is the fact that Dinky Soliman, the head of DSWD, seems to treat the COA revelation in a very cavalier way. Despite the evidence presented by COA, evidence that clearly prompted its scathing report, a report it probably would not have unleashed against another agency of government had it not been fully convinced of its authenticity, all that she had to say was that the relief goods had all been distributed already.
There is a reason, however, for the smugness of Soliman. She happens to be one of the untouchable favorites of Noynoy Aquino. She is in the unique company of Aquino allies like Mar Roxas, Emilio Abaya, Proceso Alcala, Francis Tolentino, Joel Villanueva, Niel Tupas, and many others who, despite failures and controversies, not only remain in his good graces but are actually cited every so often, in SONAs and other occasions, as the paragons of virtue and models of Daang Matuwid.
Daang Matuwid, however, like in real life, is a two-way street. While it selectively prosecutes the perceptively corrupt among his sworn enemies, it also selectively protects the perceptively failed personalities among his allies and friends. Daang Matuwid holds enemies as incapable of reason and redemption, and friends as incapable of shortcomings and wrongdoing. To borrow the language of the COA report, the Daang Matuwid is the most epic of all failures.
- Latest
