The
real disaster is the government itself. For a while I thought President
Aquino was hands on in overseeing relief efforts for the victims of
monster typhoon Yolanda. During a global interview, CNN’s Christiane Amanpour asked President Aquino pointedly: You had made known your campaign against graft and corruption, but how do you think your presidency is going to be defined by its handling of your government’s slow relief response for the victims of this catastrophe?
Apparently, Amanpour already knew the situation on the ground from its CNN team headed by veteran reporter Anderson Cooper.
Aquino, unable to blame his predecessor this time, pointed to a flawed system that he said placed local government units in charge of relief operations. But they too, and their families suffered from the typhoon, Aquino said. In other words, since local government units are not functioning, then no one is really in charge.
During these times of horrific human suffering, one refrains from criticizing government and presumes that our officials know how to handle the situation. But the colossal mishandling of relief operations does not allow us to cope with the magnitude of devastation wrought by typhoon Yolanda.
The international community is responding to the catastrophe with money, medicine, relief goods, doctors from Medicins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders), and rescue teams from the US military.
Delivery of the relief goods and services, however, is not moving fast enough. The choke point is that the government has been clueless on how to go about the relief operations from Day One. Consider this. Authorities won’t allow planes other than military aircraft to land at Tacloban airport.
Bypassing Tacloban, a US C-130 plane loaded with relief goods was able to land in Ormoc, Leyte and delivered its cargo to the grateful people.
Why can’t the government harness all available aircraft and just drop the relief goods to the starving populace?
The AFP bought 10 helicopters from Poland but they are not being used to airlift relief goods to far- flung areas. Defense Secretary Voltaire Gazmin reasoned out the choppers cannot carry enough load and it would be a waste of fuel.
But it’s not a waste of fuel when ferrying officials even during non-emergency situation?
A week after Yolanda struck last Friday, many of the main roads have not been cleared for relief trucks to pass through. Truck convoys are lined up in Matnog, Sorsogon waiting for clearance to deliver their life-saving cargo to the victims in the Visayas.
The government could have released rice stockpiled in a National Food Authority warehouse in Alangalang town, 17 kilometers from Tacloban. When the NFA officials did not, hungry looters ransacked the warehouse resulting in eight people killed in a stampede on Tuesday. What were the NFA officials waiting for, authority from Agriculture Secretary Proceso Alcala to release the rice?
We can’t say enough about the fury unleashed by Yolanda. Horrific images of the monster typhoon’s handiwork keep flashing on our TV screens like a recurring nightmare.
For those of us who have no concept of what hell is like, images of Tacloban’s devastation are pages straight out of hell.The survivors of the violence visited by Yolanda on the Visayan provinces gave graphic description of what it’s like to pass through the gates of hell.
The stench of decomposing bodies strewn on the streets is overwhelming. Without water and electricity, the mortuary and few funeral parlors in Tacloban can’t cope with the corpses that keep piling up. The Department of Health has run out of body bags, leaving the dead exposed for the flies to feast on. Some have been buried in mass graves to prevent an epidemic. The graves are dug shallow so the corpses can be easily exhumed and identified later.
Those who survived are like the walking dead, wailing in their misery. Thousands have not eaten in days. The Leyte landscape has been turned into a wasteland after Yolanda swept the Visayas with apocalyptic dimension.
Other provinces are just as devastated by Yolanda, the world’s worst natural calamity. But Tacloban serves as the screen saver for us not to forget Samar and the other provinces which are less accessible to government rescue and relief workers.
Conscience-stricken congressmen and senators have given up or realigned their Priority Development Assistance Fund to the stricken provinces. They should. It’s not their money, anyway; it’s the people’s money. They, in fact, should do more. They should get out of their gated mansions and be with their constituents.
In the Makati condo where I live, unit owners -- including foreigners and expat tenants—have donated relief goods like rice, canned goods, bottled water, clothing and medicine.
In Warsaw, Poland where I was once posted as ambassador, a timely United Nations conference on climate change and global warming is being held. Naderev Saño, the head of the Philippine delegation, made a dramatic appeal for the environment by going on a fast for the duration of the conference.
Developing countries are urging the developed nations to increase funding for the mitigation of climate change and to reduce their carbon emissions. The industrialized countries’ priority, however, is reviving their faltering economies. This means business as usual as their factories continue to churn out smog and other pollutants.
http://manilastandardtoday.com/2013/11/16/this-time-aquino-gets-the-blame/
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