SURVIVORS of the devastating 2013 Typhoon “Yolanda” scored the Aquino administration anew on Wednesday after learning that cash donations for the victims of the deadly storm remained undistributed and were sitting idle in government trust funds.
“How heartless can the government be?” asked Marissa Cabaljao, secretary-general of the People Surge group that was formed in the wake of Yolanda.
“Millions of funds are kept idle in banks while disaster survivors suffer inhumane conditions in bunkhouses and temporary shelters. Funds that could have been better used to help survivors get back on their feet remain unused,” Cabaljao said.
“Is the Aquino regime tightening its belt to those who need their assistance the most? It looks like they’re penny pinching with us,” Cabaljao added.
Cabaljao noted that there is an increase in lump-sum funds for 2016 which, according to reports, amounts to as much as P758.398 billion. “These funds may be used to perpetuate the system of political patronage already in place,” she said.
“When do they plan to distribute those idle funds? Sa tamang panahon [At the right time]? When is this tamang panahon, when the election is near?” she asked, adding that People Surge fears that disaster funds will be used for election purposes.
Senator Ferdinand R. Marcos said the fears are not far-fetched.
“We can see that many funds of the government are being used for election,” said Marcos when asked by media on the possibility the Yolanda funds being used as campaign funds.
Marcos noted that until now, the Department of Social Welfare and Development refuses to answer his inquiries as to where the billions of pesos in international donations on funding for relief agencies went.
In addition to unused disaster funds, the senator cited reports about expired medicines and relief goods intended for Yolanda survivors.
Likewise, Marcos said that two years since the typhoon the government has yet to deliver on its promise of providing shelter to those rendered homeless as a result of the disaster.
The National Housing Authority earlier said the government has built 16,000 or fewer than 10 percent of the 205,128 homes supposed to be built for Yolanda survivors.
“They should be ashamed for letting suffer the victims of Yolanda who have been waiting for help from the government. Two years of waiting for these people is already long,” Marcos said.
The senator said he is supporting calls for a Senate investigation on the idle Yolanda relief funds.
Marcos, chairman of the Senate Committee on Public Works, conducted an investigation into alleged sub-standard bunk houses the government built as temporary shelters for survivors of typhoon Yolanda.
Marcos said he is continuing his efforts to conduct a “closer examination on the ground” to see exactly what the situation is in the areas hit by Yolanda, which devastated the Visayas on November 8, 2013.
But Cabaljao said People Surge remains firm in its call to frustrate the political ambitions of President Benigno Aquino’s aspiring successor Mar Roxas. “President Aquino and Roxas already started making their rounds in our storm-battered region,” Cabaljao stated.
Last week, Aquino and Roxas paid a visit to Arteche, Eastern Samar to check the billion worth US grant project of circumferential road network that will supposedly connect Eastern and Northern Samar.
“His field trips are mere hypocrisy to build up the electoral base of his aspiring successor Roxas. Apparently, politicians are using Yolanda as a political capital. They will never gain our support,” she said.