Officials get firsthand look, and feel, of substandard housing for Zamboanga siege survivors

ZAMBOANGA CITY, Philippines — Rep. Alfonso Benitez (Negros Occidental), chair of the housing and urban development committee, got glaring evidence of defects in government housing when a wooden bridge gave way and dumped him in the water during a fact-finding trip.

Benitez was was inspecting houses on stilts at Sitio Hongkong in Barangay Rio Hondo with Rep. Celso Lobregat (Zamboanga City) and Mayor Maria Isabelle Climaco-Salazar and National Housing Authority officials, who also fell in the water.

Minutes later, another wooden footbridge also collapsed under the weight of residents. No one was reported hurt.

"I'm okay but a little crab is in my hair," Mayor Salazar said to make light of the situation.

Benitez said: "True enough, it was a fruitful inspection. The evidence is very clear."

Rep. Lobregat said they had been discusssing how the wooden bridges are unsafe while on the way to the inspection.

Benitez said his committee will investigate the defective housing units further and that the incident will be included in the probe report.

The officials were in the city to look into complaints from residents who had been displaced by the Zamboanga Siege of 2013. He said some are still waiting for their houses to be built. Some also complained that their NHA houses had no access to power and water.

"At this point we are trying to find out if there is substandard material [used] and, obviously, even the bridges leading to their homes are substandard," he said as he directed the NHA to fix the bridges because they put residents in danger.

"I saw the stilts the homes are on are made of wood and could collapse like the bridge did. It is just waiting for a disaster to happen. So my recommendation to the NHA is to replace them with concrete and make them more resilient to wear and tear," Benitez, a potential administration candidate for the senatorial elections in 2019, said.

Wood is a traditional building material for houses on stilts, which are also traditional.