PALO, Leyte – Several units of bunkhouses located this town remain unoccupied as intended beneficiaries, families whose houses were washed out due to supertyphoon Yolanda, refuses to leave their villages.
This was disclosed by Rosalina Balderas, chief of the Municipal Social Welfare and Development Office (MSWDO) who said that fear of lack of economic livelihood was the reason cited by the families who refused to take the bunkhouses. At least 30 units of bunkhouses at Barangay Tacuranga, a village more than five kilometers away from the town center, remain unoccupied. Balderas said that the said bunkhouses were intended for the families in the villages of San Joaquin, Cogon and Salvacion, among the hardest-hit areas of Palo during the onslaught of Yolanda.
In fact, she said, not all of the 143 families now living at the bunk houses in Tacuranga are from these three barangays. “When we conducted community assembly and social preparation and social preparation for transfer, not all families from San Joaquin and Cogon were willing to move since their sources of living are near the coastal area, “Balderas said. As of August 23, only 17 families from Salvacion, 14 from San Joaquin, two from Cogon heeded the call to move to their temporary shelters. And the refusal of these families coming from the four priority villages prompted their office to transfer families from other villages but lives in areas identified as risk areas to occupy the remaining units.
The families were from Tacuranga(81 families); Arado(15);Campetic(5); and three families each from the villages of Sta. Cruz and Pawing; two from Cavite West, and one from Cavite East. As of now, the local government unit of Palo is working out to develop a permanent housing site in the villages of Caloogan and Barayong in coordination with the GMA Kapuso Foundation, San Miguel Corporation, Tzu Chi Foundation and United Nations Habitat. (DEMI MARI DAGA, LNU Intern)
