EDITORIAL - Gov't must answer for tent city tragedy

Nothing best illustrates the criminal neglect and gross inefficiency of government than the tragedy that has befallen the Ocenar family in Tacloban City. Seven Ocenars — the mother and all her six children — perished in a fire that destroyed their home. The father was in Samar working as a fisherman at the time.

So, what has government got to do with the fire that it should be fittingly accused of criminal neglect and gross inefficiency? Because the fire was at the tent city government built in Tacloban to house victims of super typhoon Yolanda.

But what has government got to do with the fire even if it happened in the tent city it built? Because it is already more than six months since the world's strongest typhoon in recorded history destroyed Tacloban but all government has got to show for its rehabilitation effort is that squallid and overcrowded tent city.

Oh sure it has finished building some bunkhouses — about 200 of them, for a city with roughly 300,000 people before Yolanda. Six months after Yolanda and but for the "lucky" 200 now living in bunkhouses, everyone else is still living in tents?

Where is the government? What has it been doing? But wait, there is more. It has been widely proclaimed in media that the government, yes the government, has allocated billions upon billions to pump-prime the rehab efforts. But where is that money? Where did it go?

Much of what is palpable in the devastated areas is the handiwork of foreign relief and volunteer organizations. Much of what is going around is foreign aid donations. It seems that the government has left its own people in the care of foreigners.

Oh sure, there are a few doleouts here and there, coursed through politicians, for work that does not address the problem at hand such as cleaning and beautifying roadsides. In the meantime, aside from the virtual absence of liveable resettlements, schools in Leyte have yet to see a hammer and a nail from government.

So where is government? Why, it is engrossed in the Napoles thingy, and how its political fortunes in 2016 can either profit from it, or be insulated from its fallout. No wonder that the rehab czar it appointed with so much fanfare only has his own version of the Napoles list to crow about.

But the surest answer to the question where is government is this — as sure as the sun rises in the east, it is not in the tent city in Tacloban where a fire killed, in just 10 minutes, Maria Eliza Ocenar and her six kids: Cathleen, 12; Justine, 9; John Mark, 6; Jasmine Claire, 5; Jovelyn, 3; and Jacklyn, four months.