US envoy, 8 solons visit Leyte town for aid status

PALO, LEYTE, Philippines — United States Ambassador to Philippines, Philip Goldberg, and eight US congressmen were at the village of San Jose, this town, to see how the World Food Programme (WFP) and its partners were distributing US aid and how this impacted on the lives of Yolanda victims.

The US legislators were Representatives Ed Royce and Brad Sherman of California, Steve Chabot of Oklahoma, Joe Wilson of South Carolina, Madeleine Bordallo of Guam, Randy Weber of Texas, Joseph P. Kennedy of Minnesota and Luke Messer of Indiana.

Representative Ed Royce said he was particularly interested to hear how the amendment he recently introduced to the US law, governing foreign relief aid, was helping the victims.

Royce told The Freeman that they now allow the USAID and its partner NGOs to buy supplies locally or from neighboring countries, unlike before when all the goods must come from the US thus delaying emergency relief efforts.

Dan Suther of the USAID said the amendment has helped a lot as it allowed them to locally purchase food like biscuits and rice for immediate distribution.

Representative Brad Sherman, on the other hand, said the US now courses its relief assistance through the USAID that, in turn, funds humanitarian NGOs, like WFP, to deliver this to the affected families.

For the Yolanda relief effort, the US Congress allotted $83 million for emergency and rehabilitation efforts in the Philippines, he said, adding that the WFP already got $25 million of this fund.

Praveen Agrawal, representative and country director of WFP-Philippines, said they were already in Leyte a day after Yolanda hit. “We were on the first flight in a C-130,” he said, adding they closely monitored the typhoon’s progress. The destruction, however, was of a scope beyond what they imagined.

Among the interventions applied by the WFP to the communities it was serving, in partnership with other NGOs like The Samaritan’s Purse, was to distribute food, shelter kits and medical service. They also “topped up” the 4P’s subsidy to its recipients by P 2,600 for December and January as a form of cash assistance to the victims.

When the US delegation arrived yesterday morning, they handed out to the San Jose village residents the second wave of rice assistance at 10 kilos per person, in addition to food packs. Big families went home with sacks of rice.

Representative Bordallo told the Baltazar couple: “You are very generous. You are a resilient people. You work together and still have smiles on your faces even after what you’ve been through.”

Leyte 1st district Rep. Ferdinand Martin Romualdez also arrived at the venue to be with the US legislators and the town residents. (FREEMAN)