27 families move in to repaired homes

CEBU, Philippines - At least 27 families of Cortes town, Bohol whose houses were destroyed in the magnitude 7.2 earthquake have finally moved in to their reconstructed homes exactly a year from when the quake shook the Visayas.

On October 15, 2014, the first 27 families in Bohol transferred back to their homes which have been restructured under the Rebuild Bohol program of the Department of Social Welfare and Development, Habitat for Humanity, and the Bohol Provincial Government.

Department of Interior and Local Government Secretary Mar Roxas led the turnover of the houses.

Lourdes Umay, 39 of Cortes town, and her family were one of those that benefited from the program.

Umay said that she, her husband, Felix, and four children aged 14, 11, eight and one  have been living in a makeshift house made of bamboo for almost a year.

A total of 8,083 units were originally up for reconstruction as stated in the memorandum of agreement signed February 2014, according to DSWD Disaster Risk Reduction Unit manpower development assistant Ma. Lagrimas Lim.

“The original number went down to around 5,609 after the special revalidation done by the provincial government because we have to make sure the bene-ficiaries are those whose homes were totally damaged. But this is not yet the final because some appealed to the grievance committee,” Lim told The Freeman.

Aside from the 27 completed units in Cortes, 16 others have also been finished in Danao while one is in Sagbayan town.

The beneficiaries were chosen from the 17 hardest-hit towns in Bohol as identified by authorities.

Each core shelter is worth P120,000, higher than the original P88,000 since, according to Lim, Habitat for Humanity pointed out that there were materials with higher cost and  were shipped from Manila.

As agreed among stakeholders, DSWD’s counterpart for each house is P70,000 while Habitat for Humanity’s part is P50,000. The beneficiary families shelled out around P3,000 for the double walling inside the house which is made of combined bamboo and cement.

Partially damaged homes were likewise given assistance in the form of P25,000-worth of housing materials from DSWD.

“We already distributed the assistance to partially damaged households in all 17 hardest hit towns except Catigbian, Sagbayan and Maribojoc. We excluded Antequera because the National Housing Authority is taking care of them. Under EO 17 of 2010, a family has to receive only one assistance from a government institution amounting to P10,000 and above,” Lim explained. — Jessa J. Agua/ATO (FREEMAN)