BY: REY ANTHONY H. CHIU
TAGBILARAN CITY, Bohol, June 8 (PIA) –If only to assuage the apprehension of Boholano families still awaiting for that long awaited core shelters, Bohol leaders start distributing ownership certificates in lieu of the houses which would be built soon.
Habitat for Humanity Foundation Project Manager Vince Delector bared this recently as his organization has built only about 10% as yet of the 8,083 core shelters they agreed to build.
The government and humanitarian shelter groups have promised a Core Shelter Assistance Program: a simple house measuring at least 16x16 meters to 20x20 meters, with tin sheet roof, plywood or reinforced concrete walls, fitted with toilet and sanitation fixtures.
This should finally settle the victims who have been in temporary living quarters after the earthquake wrecked their houses.
The government through the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) has agreed to partner with Habitat to build the necessary core shelters, full houses that would allow the victims to start off rebuilding their lives.
The rest of those families needing shelter assistance, international and local humanitarian organizations are responding.
In the past week, Governor Edgar Chatto led local officials in distributing Certificates of Ownership, to assure earthquake victims with totally damaged houses and those advised to relocate, amidst unforeseen delays in delivering the core shelters.
While some humanitarian shelter aid groups have fairly completed most of their core shelter aids to Bohol, like Habitat, several organizations are still saddled by difficulties in securing materials, making deliveries and gathering human labor counterparts, Delector said.
The long delay has somehow unsettled some of the 8,480 victims whose houses were total wrecks after the 7.2 magnitude earthquake shook Bohol October 15.
Earlier on, if only to respond to the dire need to put up temporary shelters, organizations initially released Emergency Shelter Assistance, in the hopes of helping families secure temporary shelters, while awaiting for the core shelters.
But the post earthquake construction boom stirred local markets, sending artificial price increases, scarcity and other strains in local construction industry.
Compounding to that is the unusually high number of on-site builds, owing to lack of government secured lands for socialized housing where builders could easily deliver materials in a common dump.
“Imagine the trouble of delivering construction materials to different locations all over the 17 towns, some areas inaccessible by transport,” Delector illustrated.
On this, he instead asked beneficiaries who have not received core shelters as promised, to coordinate with them so they could also help transport the materials from the nearest road access to build sites.
“Getting additional labor would again entail additional costs,” he voiced out as the government funds only about 70,000 of the government’s CSAP, while Habitat puts up the P17,000 in any form, to complete a house that would be structurally strong and disaster resilient. (mbcn/rahc/PIA7-Bohol)