Thanks for retroactive dilligence

June 21, 2014

Iloilo City 

Interior Secretary Mar Roxas ran an extra mile by turning his keynote address into a DRRMO seminar replete with power point presentation to enlighten participants to the annual assembly of the Student Councils Alliance of the Philippines (SCAP).

“Victims or leaders? The answer lies in our hands,” Roxas told student leaders from different schools in the country gathered at the Central Philippine University (CPU) here June 20.

Roxas’ address-cum-lecture was extensive as he touched on “sea surges” and "geo-hazard" areas already identified in maps and are now a keyboard away from students. “These data are available in our webpage and for free,” he declared.

We are grateful for his zealousness in raising our awareness on disaster preparedness. On second thought, he should have done that before super-typhoon Yolanda reduced much of the Visayas into a howling wilderness with its 350 kph winds.  The misery of victims numbering to 350,000 households would have been avoided had Roxas, key player in the DRRMO, prepared for it in two ways – before and after the calamity, the latter, called “relief and rehabilitation.”

NDRRMO stands for “national disaster risk reduction and management office”, one which coordinates pre-disaster preparedness and post disaster rehabilitation.

Until today, the national government of which Roxas is a key player has not even accomplished 25 percent rehabilitating communities and infrastructures. The sluggishness has enraged even his "kasimanwa" in Capiz Province who, last Labor Day celebration (May 1) massed up, 10,000 of them, in its capital Roxas City to express their collective anger against official callousness and neglect.

Congress and foreign donors, according to Rep. Neri Colmenares (Bayan Muna) released more than P14 billion for Yolanda victims. We don’t know where the monies went in snail-paced operations riddled with corruption, if we have seen the TV footages or newspaper photos of substandard and overpriced bunkers for victims, and relief goods founding their way in the black market or rotting in warehouses..

Weeks passed but Leyte, the worst hit, still littered with corpses. The “solution” that the government of which Roxas was a key player, was first, to relieve the PNP general who estimated the death toll to 10,000, and next, to stop counting after the death toll hit the 6,000 mark.

We certainly need Roxas and more such public officials out to alert us to avoid disasters or reduce the risks thereof, and still, be quick in responding to the scene to bring water, food and medicines that Roxas and his ilk did two weeks after the disaster and threatening local officials of official inaction because they belonged to the opposition.

Listening to Roxas pontificating on disaster preparedness is like staring at presidential sister Kris bantering on marital fidelity. 

Thanks anyway for the retroactive diligence.