Children affected by Jolo fire get psychosocial support
COTABATO CITY, Philippines — The government is now extending psychological interventions to hundreds of school children displaced by the July 24 conflagration in Jolo, Sulu that destroyed 2,112 houses.
The fire that ravaged Barangays Busbus and Walled City in Jolo left no fewer than 6,000 Tausug and Samah families homeless.
Lawyer Rasol Mitmug Jr., regional education secretary of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, said Saturday the provincial office of the Department of Education-ARMM in Sulu is now providing school children from the affected areas with trauma treatment.
“It is like `psychological first aid.’ It is so traumatic for children to see their houses get burned and disappear,” Mitmug said.
Reports reaching the regional office here of DepEd-ARMM indicated that about a thousand from the 21,118 individuals displaced by the fire that hit Barangays Busbus and Walled City are grade school pupils and high school students.
The fire-stricken Jolo residents are now in gymnasiums and school campuses in the municipality.
Jolo is the capital town of Sulu, a component province of ARMM.
The executive department of ARMM has been helping the municipal government of Jolo attend to the needs of evacuees through its regional emergency contingent, the Humanitarian Emergency Assistance and Response Team, most known as HEART.
The HEART and the Western Mindanao Command of the Armed Forces facilitated last July 25 the transport of relief supplies to Jolo from Cotabato City using an aircraft borrowed from the Philippine Air Force.
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