Dark and massive social injustice is present when Filipinos, whose life and future have been devastated by natural calamities as what has happened in Metro Manila and Luzon these past weeks, continue to die of hunger, wallow in despair and hopelessness, loose their dignity and self-respect, suffer the pain and misery caused by a feeling of national shame, and develop the strong desire to revolt against their inept and corrupt political leaders led by their illegitimate and lameduck president, Gloria Arroyo, and her equally incompetent emergency response team led by her obedient presidential bet, Defense Secretary Gilberto Teodoro.
Read the Inquirer items below, for your information.
Editorial
Turtle-paced relief
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 03:39:00 10/25/2009
MANILA, Philippines—On October 21, a blogger named “Ella” posted an entry chronicling her experience as a volunteer at the DSWD warehouse on Church Road, Pasay City. She photographed heaps of relief goods, many of them donations from foreign governments and organizations, and asked why so little seemed to have been done with the supplies. (The blogger never alleged outright theft or mishandling of relief goods, only frustration over how goods didn’t seem to be moving out the door with any speed at all.)
The blogger also asked why imported goods seemed to have been set aside. After all, the last thing we need is a repeat of the Guinsaugon relief efforts, where officials cornered imported relief goods and sent expired domestic relief items to the victims.
Within two days the entry had been read, and passed on to others, by a growing number of people online, and had piqued the interest of the Philippine News in the United States and media here at home.
Social Welfare Secretary Esperanza Cabral responded with a statement saying the department was working “around the clock,” and that while the DSWD’s warehouses were, indeed, full, “we have distributed 500,000 food packs and 200,000 clothing packs as well as thousands of sacks of rice, blankets, beddings, and items of personal hygiene in the past almost 4 weeks.”
Cabral says that what is taking place is a “calibrated release” of goods, and her response is worth reproducing at length: “Relief response is not just emergency assistance. There will come a time when we have to do recovery work and rehabilitation work and when that time comes there will not be many volunteers left. There will be large NGOs that we usually work with but mostly it will be the government that will provide relief to these people who are starting to recover and who need to be rehabilitated. We need to keep some resources for them because when that time comes, there will be no more donations coming in, some will be reserved.”
And yet in her official statement, she pursued the line put forward by her secretary—blame it on a lack of volunteers: “Our goods are repacked by volunteers who are there because they want to help. But they are volunteers and report when they have time to help us. Sometimes there are two hundred of them and sometimes there are only a dozen.”
There is something incongruous about the welfare secretary saying government will do the job, as it expects volunteers to peter out, only to then blame its inability to act in a swifter manner, on a lack of volunteers. Public opinion has been—deservedly, we believe—harsh on the DSWD precisely because while the private sector required volunteers to accomplish what is a temporary job, the DSWD has a continuing task and enormous resources at the command of the President. Or, she could have made a public appeal—and indeed did make one, but only after the blogger’s entry started making the rounds.
We understand Secretary Cabral means well. As reported in the papers on Oct. 19, she vowed a “politico-proof” distribution of relief. She told radio station dzBB, “We will not allow politicos to repack UN-donated goods. These will go through us and our personnel will be there while the goods are distributed.”
We bring this up because a “politico-proof” policy is the right thing and ought to have been applied to all relief goods. But she seems to have established one set of behavior for one set of goods, and another set of behavior for another.
The DSWD’s own record of disbursements of relief goods lists the following: disbursements to Secretary Bello on Sept. 27; to Representative Puno (brother of the interior secretary) on Sept. 28; to Representative Ermita-Buhain (daughter of the executive secretary) on Sep. 29 and Oct. 7; to Senator Revilla on Oct. 1; to Representative Crisologo on Oct. 2 and 13; to Rep. Rodrigo Antonino on Oct. 9; to Representative Pizarro on Oct. 10; Representative Abayon on Oct. 11; Representative Arquiza on Oct. 12; and Vice President De Castro on Oct. 3 and 15. In addition, there were at least 15 disbursements to the Malacañang Disaster Operations Center, and three to Camp Aguinaldo.
Far from “politico-proof”!
See:
http://opinion.inquirer.net/inquireropinion/editorial/view/20091025-232107/Turtle-paced-relief
Blogger stands by claim of rotting relief goods
By Edson C. Tandoc Jr.
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 06:14:00 10/25/2009
MANILA, Philippines – The blogger who accused the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) of hoarding millions of pesos worth of donations to victims of storms “Ondoy” and “Pepeng” stood by her claim even after Social Welfare Secretary Esperanza Cabral denied that donated items were rotting in a warehouse.
In her latest post, blogger Ella Rose said she was only doing her part as a “concerned citizen.”
Rose, a book author who claims to have volunteered to work in the DSWD’s warehouse, wrote a blog entry last week denouncing the alleged slow distribution of relief goods. Her entry was re-posted by other online users and, on Friday, Cabral finally published a 781-word reply on the DSWD’s website.
On Saturday, a “deeply hurt” Cabral said she was waiting for the advice of the DSWD’s legal service on what action to take on the matter.
At a press conference, Cabral said she felt “very bad” about the blog entry because the staff working at the DSWD’s warehouses were “vilified.”
Cabral said the DSWD staff members “worked round the clock even now, making sure that the requests for relief goods are met in a timely manner.”
Fast inflow of goods
The DSWD received some P60 million worth of donations, of which goods worth P35 million had been distributed, Cabral said. If the DSWD’s warehouse where Rose volunteered was still packed with donations, it was because of the fast inflow of goods, not because of slow distribution, Cabral said.
Cabral said that in the last four weeks, the DSWD distributed 500,000 food packs and 200,000 clothing packs, inside which were rice apportioned from thousands of sacks, blankets, bedding and personal hygiene items.
She said that distribution peaked at 25,000 relief packs per day. About 10,000 packs were still being distributed daily at this time.
Cabral said some 31,000 families displaced in the aftermath of Ondoy and more than 3,000 families left homeless by Pepeng remained in evacuation centers. The remaining stockpile of relief goods could support these families for one more month, she said.
She said the DSWD would also use the donations for the recovery phase, which would take more than a year, making it necessary to plan the distribution of resources.
‘Trust not misplaced’
“Judicious use of resources at the outset is imperative lest we face the situation of even greater want after a period of relative plenty. We at the DSWD wish to assure you that your trust in us is not misplaced,” she said.
She said it would be best if those who still wanted to donate gave construction materials at this stage.
In her blog, Rose uploaded photos of imported blankets and mats donated by foreign agencies stored in the warehouse. The blogger said they were not being included in the relief packs she and fellow volunteers were asked to pack.
Burden of proof on DSWD
In her latest entry, which was in response to Cabral’s denials, Rose said: “The burden of proof is on you. The donors expect that everything they sent be distributed immediately to the intended recipients and not be stored in some warehouse.”
She clarified in an earlier blog entry that while she was not accusing the DSWD of corruption, Cabral, she said, “was showing signs of being totally incompetent.”
She added: “The relief goods are not moving. By the way things look, they are not going anywhere.”
Her blog entry can be read at http://www.ellaganda.com/?p=1759 while Cabral’s online statement is at http://ts.dswd.gov.ph/.
See:
http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/inquirerheadlines/nation/view/20091025-232125/Blogger-stands-by-claim-of-rotting-relief-goods
Visit also: http://ellaganda.com. It helped raise the awareness of the media and the people on the above issues.