After Tent City fire tragedy; Romualdez to Palace: Move Yolanda survivors

TACLOBAN CITY, Philippines — After the Wednesday dawn tragedy of seven members of the Ocenar family who died inside their burning tent at the tent city at Brgy. San Jose in this city, Mayor Alfred Romualdez called on the national government to fasttrack the transfer of families living in tents to relocation site.

"The city government has been waiting for the appropriate action from the national government, specifically the housing authority," said Romualdez, citing the close to 700 families who are still living in tents since typhoon Yolanda struck on Nov. 8 last year.

City disaster risk reduction and management officer Federico Anido confirmed that the transfer of families was scheduled this June but, "it all now depends on the DSWD. Secretary Dinky Soliman calls the shots," he said.

Anido said Soliman had told him earlier that the transfer was before June 1. "Now I don't know how the DSWD will do that because there are no new bunkhouses being built as of now."

For six months, the families living in temporary shelters, dubbed as tent city, suffered poor living condition, most of them has no sanitary toilets yet, made worse by the lack of water supply and no jobs. "There was no help from the national government," said Anido.

On rehabilitation efforts, the national government built only 1,000 bunkhouses at Brgy. Caibaan but there are still 700 families left behind in uncomfortable tents, and majority of these structures is situated within the 40-meter danger zone, he said.

"After six months from Yolanda, there was no visual evidence of rehabilitation by the national government. Tacloban City is now under direct supervision of Malacañang since 2008 when it was declared as a highly urbanized city," Anido added.  (FREEMAN)