Stop using classrooms as evacuation centers, party-list solon says

MANILA, Philippines - Local government units should construct permanent evacuation sites instead of using classrooms, Ako Bicol (AKB) Party-list said.

"Instead of solving evacuation woes, we are creating a new set of evacuees as a result of the displacement of our teachers and students from their respective classrooms," AKB Rep. Rodel Batocabe said.

The lawmaker added that classrooms are not designed and prepared to meet the needs of evacuees such as water supplies, toilet facilities, proper ventilation and lighting.

The remark was made in light of the problems encountered by stakeholders due to the evacuation of around 57,000 individuals from the six-kilometer-radius Mayon volcano permanent danger zone and seven-km expanded danger zone to 48 emergency evacuation centers in Albay.

The Special Committee on Bicol Recovery and Economic Development inspected the evacuation centers and discovered that 30 to 60 families or around 120 people cram inside a classroom. The equipment inside these overcrowded classrooms such as windows, blackboards and other instructional materials were damaged.

The Department of Education further reported that 39,317 students in 40 schools were evicted from their classrooms which are being used as evacuation centers and use temporary congested classrooms which are not conducive for learning.

Setting up alternative learning sites reportedly cost P18 million and an additional P5 million for procurement of chairs which could have been used in building evacuation centers in other sites, the AKB representative said.

"What we have is a chaotic school campus cum marketplace and an instant barangay located in a small area. Aside from the costs of maintaining our evacuees, we can not adequately quantify the psycho-social costs and productive losses to our schoolchildren, teachers and victims because of this chaotic and congested situation," Batocabe said.

The Albay provincial government usually performs pre-emptive evacuation in school classrooms in events of typhoons and other natural disasters to maintain its claim of zero casualty.

Residents from the Mayon geo-hazard zone have been staying in evacuation centers for two months when the provincial government allowed some of them to return home upon the recommendation of Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology on Tuesday.