TACLOBAN City, Philippines - City Mayor Alfred Romualdez on Saturday said that it would have been nice if President Benigno Aquino III also visited the city, which was worst-hit in Visayas by Super Typhoon Yolanda (Haiyan) last year.
"I leave it up to the President ... tao na lang ang maghusga diyan on how they feel about it, but as far as I'm concerned it would [have been] nice if he visited also places that he has not yet visited so that he can see what's going on there," Romualdez said.
Instead of Tacloban City, Aquino visited Guiuan town, where Yolanda made lanfall on November 8 last year.
Other top officials including Sen. Bongbong Marcos, Ilocos Norte Rep. Imelda Marcos and Leyte Rep. Ferdinand Martin Romualdez joined the hundreds of Tacloban City residents in remembering their dead during simple rites at the Holy Cross Memorial at the Holy Cross Memorial in Barangay Basper.
Mayor Romualdez said that the ceremony is also for the more than 600 residents of Tacloban who are still missing.
"It's important that we put a memorial here because many of the families did not just lose one family member... some of them even lost 15," he said."They never had time to mourn their dead because they were busy reconstructing their lives."
Local officials at the memorial told reporters that last November 1, those who lost relatives from the onslaught of super typhoon went to the memorial and started marking white crosses with names.
White crosses were put on each grave of a Tacloban City resident killed by Super Typhoon Yolanda on Nov. 8, 2013. The relatives themselves wrote the names on the crosses. Philstar/Angelo Gutierrez
A total of 2,274 people were buried at the memorial site.
"It's only now, All Souls Day onward, that they really reflect and they look back and nami-miss nila ang kanilang mga mahal sa buhay. Papasok na rin ang pasko, 'yan importante. Kasama sa kutura natin at least meron silang napupuntahan every year at nakikita nila alam nila na naaalagaan ang mga patay. In our culture we respect our dead and we treat our dead sacred," he said.