A year after Yolanda: Nothing but shame
Last Saturday was the first anniversary of the greatest natural disaster that hit the Philippines, when super typhoon “Yolanda” (International Code name “Haiyan”) struck the Visayas, which is located in the heart of the country, hitting Guiuan, at the southernmost tip of Samar, Tacloban and Ormoc in Leyte, Northern Cebu and Northern Panay. As we all remember, the Aquino Regime boasted that they were prepared for this super typhoon and in the end, the world knew how unprepared they were. This is why for the commemoration of the 1st anniversary of super typhoon “Yolanda” we are not asking anyone from the national and local government to be on this show.
Instead, we’ve asked Mr. Augusto “Sonny” Carpio, Managing Trustee of the Aboitiz Foundation to share with us their experience in their very quick effort to come up with relief goods to where they were needed and best of all, the Aboitiz Foundation collected the biggest amount of over P200 million to fund rehabilitation efforts in Ormoc and Northern Cebu. They even got more money than what the Province of Cebu or the National Government came up with. Best of all, they are right on target in their rehab of broken schools.
So watch the story from Sonny Carpio on how the Aboitiz Foundation was able to mobilize and raise this fund to help our people in their time of need. Watch this show on SkyCable’s channel 61 at 8:00PM with replays on Wednesday and Saturday same time and channel. We also have replays on MyTV’s channel 30 at 7:00AM and 9:00PM and on Wednesday and Fridays.
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It’s been a year and two days after super typhoon Yolanda struck and the news headline at the bottom of the front-page of the Philippine Star last Wednesday said a lot when it blared “Still no final Yolanda death toll.” The article said that the official count stopped around 4,000. Presidential Communications Sec. Herminio Coloma, Jr. said, “As you know there is still an ongoing process of identification of the remains of the victims which is led by the National Bureau of Investigation ”. Then he goes on saying that he will consult with the National Risk Reduction Management Council on the final death toll.
I’ve got to hand it to Mr. Coloma how he could lie with a straight face before the media. Pray, Mr. Coloma, tell me how much is needed for the NBI to be able to identify those corpses? I was recently in Tacloban and I didn’t see any group digging hastily dug graves so that corpses could be forensically identified. He says he will ask the NRRMC for the final death toll. Surely he must have known by now that Pres. Benigno Aquino III told the NRRMC to stop the count when it was nearing 8,000.
Come now, the Filipino people especially those in Tacloban know why the President stopped the count — so that he won’t get embarrassed if and when the death toll would reach more than 10,000 and end up proving PNP Region 8 Director Elmer Soria right. The PNP regional director was fired by the President as his first act when he went to Tacloban after the typhoon exited. This is why today no one knows exactly how many people perished!
But an NGO wrote me to answer the query that we wrote before; that his NGO group brought along 20,000 cadaver bags just days after the typhoon struck and they ran out of them in just a few days with people asking for more cadaver bags. Pres. Aquino cannot comprehend what he did by ordering the NRRM to stop the counting.
This President doesn’t realize that the families of missing persons have to wait for seven years before they can be officially declared as dead, then and only then can husbands who lost their wives or wives who lost their husbands can remarry and rebuild their families. All this has happened just because we have a President who had vowed that the death toll from Yolanda wouldn’t reach 10,000! A year later, no one still knows the exact figure!
On this issue alone, the President should have quit in shame for failing the Filipino people at the time of their need. But then he has no shame! So his sins against the Filipino people continue to pile up. Perhaps one of the biggest sins of Pres. Aquino is that report that the Aquino Regime could only account for US$14 million in donations given by foreign governments and aid groups. This is a miniscule figure from the reported US$600 million that the Philippines received from these foreign governments and aid groups.
Surely if Mr. Aquino has a face to show to the world today on the first anniversary of the greatest typhoon to strike planet Earth, he ought to come up with a full accounting of that aid money, otherwise, those who gave us money or aid in our time of need wouldn’t trust this President anymore if and when we get hit by another natural disaster. Again as a Filipino, I am ashamed that this government failed to account for most of the money! Shame on the Aquino Regime for this unprecedented incompetence!
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