Bunkhouses’ site may become a ghost towQuake survivors live beside the dead

LOON, BOHOL, Philippines – As if haunted by the spirits of slump and government failure, the site of ten bunkhouses built here is likely to become a ghost town if earthquake survivors would not have their own permanent shelters.

Planners and government officials put up this bunkhouses’ site at the back of the town’s graveyards on a hill to resettle the survivors. President Benigno Aquino III was even the one who inaugurated the place.

Only a few however decided to live here, leaving the rest of the shelters uninhabited, with eerie desolation that marked the aftermath of the earthquake on October 15 last year. The double-walled bunkhouses are now padlocked and abandoned with grasses covering the surroundings.

According to the Municipal Social Welfare and Development Office, a total of 25 families originally resided here momentarily but most of them had to leave the place after receiving some assistance to build their own houses for good. Some of them deserted the site because of lack of livelihood. Only 11 families remained.

The Abella couple, Romeo, 51, and Violeta, 50, and their nine children are among them. They told The Freeman the bunkhouses were not put to proper use and that it was a waste of money for the government because only a few of the target 100 families have availed themselves of the offered shelters.

Many quake survivors have wanted to have a unit of the bunkhouses but were denied since some of them have already received assistance from other donors, said the Abellas, adding that their main problem now is where to reside permanently.

The Abella family said they do not own a lot thus were disqualified to avail themselves of other housing assistance like the one provided by the Habitat for Humanity Foundation. They still do not know if the municipal government wil allow them to live here permanently even if beside the graveyard, just across the access dirt road.

Another resident here even joked that it is better for the dead because they are settled in a concrete “dwelling” but the living are living on a shelter made only of light materials.

When the 7.2-magnitude earthquake hit the province last year, the makeshift house of the Abellas in the coastal barangay of Napo in this town collapsed. Without a place to live, they were forced to settle into the bunkhouse.

The bunkhouses and service facilities were built by the Department of Public Works and Highways with the Philippine Ports Authority and the Department of Social Welfare and Development as implementing agencies.

Each bunkhouse contains ten units, each of which is made of plywood and GI sheet roofing and is measured 8.8 meters X 24 meters with an area of 211 square meters.

The bunkhouses are equipped with 8-seat water-sealed toilets, four bathrooms, four washing areas and 20 cooking partitions.