Binay joins Cabinet for Yolanda meeting

MANILA, Philippines - They sat across each other at a conference table and spent nearly seven hours listening to reports yesterday, but no words were exchanged and no handshake proferred between President Aquino and Vice President Jejomar Binay at Malacañang.

Video footage of the special Cabinet meeting called to assess the rehabilitation effort in typhoon-hit areas in the Visayas showed Aquino burying his face in  a computer while Binay chatted with his seatmates, rehabilitation czar Panfilo Lacson and Public Works Secretary Rogelio Singson.

Binay attended the meeting a day after Aquino said the Vice President could quit the Cabinet if he disagreed with administration policies.

The Vice President, who heads the opposition United Nationalist Alliance (UNA), chairs the Housing and Urban Development Coordinating Council (HUDCC) and heads the Cabinet cluster on resettlement along with the National Housing Authority (NHA). He is also presidential adviser on overseas workers.

He is known to be close to the Aquino family and often says he owes his life in politics to the President’s late mother Corazon, who appointed him officer-in-charge of Makati in 1986.

Secretary Herminio Coloma Jr. of the Presidential Communications Operations Office stressed there was no tension between Aquino and Binay during the Cabinet meeting. It was NHA general manager Chito Cruz who made a presentation on the resettlement plans.

“The Cabinet meeting was focused on the tasks at hand. All the Cabinet secretaries, including the Vice President, were attentive to the discussion,” presidential spokesman Edwin Lacierda added.

Binay, who is facing Senate investigation for the allegedly overpriced Makati City Hall Building II and receiving kickbacks from the project, had criticized the Aquino administration for its supposed failure to address people’s needs.

Gov’t to finish 25,000 rehab projects

Coloma also said that during the meeting the President received from Lacson updates on the Comprehensive Recovery and Rehabilitation Plan implementation as of Oct. 31.

The government expects to finish 25,000 programs and projects under the Comprehensive Recovery and Rehabilitation Plan for areas devastated by Yolanda before Aquino steps down in 2016.

Aquino said 30 percent of the 25,000 programs and projects would be completed within 2014 based on targets, 50 percent by 2015 and the remaining 20 percent by 2016.

Also present at the meeting were the clusters on infrastructure headed by the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH); social services led by the Department of Social Welfare and Development; livelihood to be handled by the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) and the Department of Labor and Employment; and support by the Department of Budget and Management and the National Economic and Development Authority.

Lacierda said Aquino was verifying all assumptions, determining if “sufficient urgency is being shown and maximum effort being done to ensure building back better is not only on track but can be expedited as much as possible and with clear deadlines and goals.”

Earlier, Lacson noted that the delineation of safe, unsafe and controlled zones had been finalized through a joint memorandum signed by the respective secretaries of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources, Department of Science and Technology, Department of National Defense, Department of the Interior and Local Government and the DPWH.

He also reported the steady delivery of construction materials, which was being facilitated by the DTI and the DPWH.

According the Office of the Presidential Assistant for Recovery and Rehabilitation, government agencies belonging to the resettlement cluster shall also create an interagency technical working group to conduct inspection and resolve land issues of identified resettlement sites and establish special lanes to guide the NHA and developers in complying with requirements for resettlement projects.

Groups to protest gov’t failures

But some groups are already gearing up for simultaneous protest actions at the weekend for the Aquino administration’s supposed failure to provide adequate permanent housing, sustainable livelihood and other basic social services to typhoon survivors one year after Yolanda struck the country.

The umbrella group Bagong Alyansang Makabayan (Bayan) said an “international day of solidarity and national day of action” has been set on Nov. 8 and the center of the protests are the areas worst hit by Yolanda.

Bayan secretary-general Renato Reyes said Tacloban City would be the site of two days of protests on Nov. 7 and 8. Mass actions are also being readied in the provinces of Roxas, Aklan and Northern Iloilo, which were also badly hit by the super typhoon.

“In Metro Manila, a protest march to Mendiola will be held on Nov. 7 while another commemorative event will be held on Nov. 8,” he added.

A conference of victims of calamities such as Typhoons Yolanda, Pablo and Sendong will also be held in Tacloban City on Nov. 6.

Moreover, gatherings are reportedly being organized by Filipino communities and solidarity groups in the United States, Canada, Hong Kong and across Europe.

Bayan is working with People Surge, the International League of People’s Struggles, Tindog Network and the Kalikasan People’s Network for the Environment for the international and national actions.

Reyes said activists and progressive lawmakers from Manila are also expected to support the mass actions in Tacloban.

“Thousands are expected to join the protest actions on Nov. 7 and 8, one year after Yolanda and one year after the government’s neglect of the victims of the storm. More than remembering those who perished in the storm, we are called upon to join the survivors’ fight for pro-people rehabilitation and reconstruction,” Reyes said.

“It is right for the victims of Yolanda to express their outrage over the Aquino government’s failure to provide adequate permanent housing, sustainable livelihood and other basic social services. It is right for them to condemn corruption and inefficiency in the conduct of relief, rehabilitation and reconstruction work since the storm hit,” he added.

Bayan noted that there is strong domestic and international pressure on the Philippine government to deliver the basic needs of the typhoon victims considering the amount of foreign aid poured into areas hit by the super typhoon.

“But the rehabilitation framework of the Aquino government is one that depends on public-private partnerships or privatization, further marginalizing the victims. Agriculture, which is the primary source of livelihood of the majority of the population, was not given priority at the onset,” Reyes pointed out.

“The big real estate developers, mining and construction firms have divided the disaster areas and the devastated communities. They have identified the areas of investment that are profitable, a criteria that does not necessarily go hand in hand with the actual needs of the people,” he stressed.

Yolanda stamps

The Philippine Postal Corp. (PHLPost), meanwhile, will launch on Nov. 8 the Tindog Pinoy! stamps to mark the resiliency of Filipinos in the aftermath of Yolanda.

“The stamps feature an illustration of a growing plant symbolizing new life from the hands of different countries that helped the Philippines, and a rising sun symbolizing hope. ‘Tindog’ is Visayan for ‘rise’ – describing the tenacity of Filipinos during those challenging times,” PHLPost business lines manager Eric Tagle said.

The stamps will be presented to Tacloban City Mayor Alfred Romualdez in a program to be hosted by the city government on Nov. 8.

“About 20 sets of the stamps, which are packaged in souvenir frames, will also be presented by the Tacloban City government to local and international donors who have extended aid to the city, as the means of expressing their appreciation for the support to rehabilitate and restore normalcy in the lives of the locals,” Tagle said. With Rhodina Villanueva, Evelyn Macairan