3 years after quake: Government blamed for core shelter building delay

TAGBILARAN CITY, Philippines — The preceding national government, through the Social Welfare department headed by then secretary Dinky Soliman, should be blamed for the much-delayed completion of core shelters construction for the survivors, three years after the powerful earthquake struck Bohol on October 15, 2013.

This was the common view of the survivors, who told The Freeman that they still do not understand why and how this happened to them. Citing the usual bureaucratic red tape and politics, they opined that the funds for their houses might have been diverted to other projects or pockets.

But the Habitat for Humanity Foundation, originally tasked to build 8,083 core shelters in 17 towns under a memorandum of agreement (MOA) with funding from the DSWD, did not categorically say if indeed the government caused the lag or snag of the project.

Quake survivors criticized the snail pace of the works on the project, and many of them are still suffering from living in tents or in their destroyed houses, while the materials for the planned shelter construction lay unused in their backyards.

Charlie Ayco, executive director of Habitat—which had been successful in providing shelters to the homeless in some parts of the country and the world—said Habitat actually wanted to cut its load on the number of houses to be constructed.

He said Habitat had written the DSWD “as early as 2014 asking that Habitat would limit the number of houses  to 4,536,” lower than the planned 8,083 units.

The DSWD, however, did not respond immediately to the request until 2015. And only early this year that the DSWD finally made the decision to grant Habitat’s request and let the International Organization for Migration (IOM) to come in.

What prompted Habitat to reduce the load to 4,536 houses to be built, was the rising cost of construction and logistics.

Based on the MOA, Habitat had only to shell out P18,000 as counterpart to the DSWD outlay of P70,000 per unit. But the amount of the Habitat’s counterpart was later increased to P50,000 per unit, an amount that could not complete its construction, Ayco said.

He cited an example of high cost was on the delivery of materials “because we need to detour road to deliver materials since temporary bridges could not be crossed by fully loaded trucks.”

Habitat’s Vicente Delector, project manager for Bohol, admitted this is the first time they built or building shelters on-site or where the victims abode is located unlike other housing project they went through in past years, which were in relocation areas.

Providing not just roofs but hope for the homeless, Habitat has been instrumental in completing some 200 units at Barangay Bool in Tagbilaran in the early 1990s, when then US President Jimmy Carter, Habitat founder, came to launch the project.

Habitat has already completed a total of 3,400 out of its task of building 4,536 units in Bohol and 792 are still on going, according to its construction monitoring report made available to this writer. And 344 units are having materials partially delivered. (FREEMAN)