Disaster preparedness workshop calls Noy 'biggest calamity'

Iloilo City
September 2, 2015
What is the worst disaster ever befallen the country? Answer: Pres. BS Aquino III and his administration.
And how do you solve that? Answer: the people's struggle. The people shall solve that through their struggle to establish a responsive, industrialized and democratic Philippines.
That's one lesson shared and learned by participants to the two-day workshop here that also led to the formation of a "people's network" for disaster preparedness and response in Panay and Guimaras.
The gathering is also billed by organizers as "people's alternative forum" to the two-day discussion at the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) conference on a similar topic now in progress in the country, in Iloilo City particularly..
The APEC version of disaster response skirts main causes of natural disasters and blames the very victims of calamities like pointing to farmers as cause of denudation for their "kaingin", and ordinary people for disposing garbage like plastics around.
Instead, participants to the "alternative forum" point to neo-liberal economic policies pursued by governments, like "globalization" in the case of the Philippines, as main culprits.
As "worst disaster," points out Enteng Bautista, national cooordinator of Kalikasan, the Aquino government has wantonly licensed giant foreign corporations and their local partners full license to destroy the environment by permitting them to plunder vast lands for their forest and mineral resources."
As "worst disaster ever befallen the Filipino people, worse than (super-typhoon) Yolanda (Haiyan, November 8, 201), the Aquino administration has been irresponsible and callous in its response. Budgets for relief and rehabilitation, donations, relief goods are lost through graft and corruption," notes Bautista, guest speaker at the forum.
Aquino further allowed coal-fired power plants to sprout all over the country despite the notoriety of coal as major cause of global warming. And he also deployed military to terrorize Indigenous Peoples to depopulate their ancestral lands so giant mining operations can start.
Mass mobilizations by people nationwide has pressured the Aquino government to respond to the needs of victims, somehow.
Participants came from the provinces of Capiz, Aklan, Antique and Iloilo which comprise Panay Island, and Guimaras Island Province where organizations mushroomed, formed mostly by Yoland victims for self-help and to press government to act accordingly.

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