Who would think that a weak typhoon would result to an enormous disaster people from Iligan City would experience? Typhoon Sendong, internationally known as “Washi”, was considered a weak typhoon and yet it has left the city with nimaginable degree of damage. The City Social Welfare and Development (CSWD) estimated that the cost of damage to properties already reached Php 523.218 million. The number of dead people rose to 497 while there are 387 reported missing individuals – and still counting.
Remarkably, the failure of the city government of Iligan to evacuate the vulnerable residents especially those who are living in the riverbanks and coastal areas to safer places despite the early warning of Philippine Atmospheric Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration (PAGASA) that a typhoon would hit the area is reflective of the disaster unpreparedness of the city.
Having seen this entire ravage, it is interesting to know what the city government did with regard to protecting its people from disaster. It seems that the city government doesn’t care. Or if it does, it shouldn’t have approved four relatively small mining operations, each ravaging as vast as 20 hectares in Brgy. Mainit, and 18 industrial and commercial quarrying without considering their possible lethal effects. How many damages to lives and properties would it take to make the city government officials awaken from the harmful fantasy that such projects would bring forth economic growth rather than unfathomable catastrophe?
The inability of the government to immediately respond after Sendong left has continually put the Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) in a series of disastrous conditions. Many of the evacuation centers where IDPs stayed have been hardly reached by relief operations leaving the evacuees nothing to eat and drink for more than three days. This has been the reality faced by the evacuees in Hinaplanon and in number of interior barangays after the typhoon left the country.
One thing to take into account is the overwhelming participation of the civil society organizations or CSOs, United Nations bodies and International Non-Government Organizations (INGOs) in responding to the situation that has left the government behind. Having seen the incapacity of the state to deliver response quickly, the former have been active not just in relief distribution but also with resource mobilization, documentation, camp management, coordination, and other functions that supposedly the vital role of the state in times of disaster.
CSOs’ and INGOs’ active participation is not an issue here but taking over the role of the government is something to ponder upon. What was then left to the government was a huge space for individual opportunistic tendency, that is, taking advantage of the situation to gain more political investment of what the civil society organizations have been doing. Perhaps, the city government passed over the burden and responsibility to the civil society to take over their duty but reaping the rewards altogether exclusively for themselves leading to a more sustained disaster.
While overwhelming numbers of civil society organizations (local and international) participated in the disaster response, rising numbers of their kind, colloquially called “racketeers” or “fly-by-night” NGOs, are taking advantage of the situation of the flood victims to gain more money for their own interest. Further, donations indiscriminately poured over in the evacuation camps and communities are supposedly to address the needs of the IDPs. However, non-recognition of donors of the installed mechanisms lead to conflict among IDPs thus exacerbates their present situation, exposing them to another disaster.
At this stage, a call for all the civil society organizations for transparency and accountability by opening up their books on the amount and quantity of the donations they received for these have been asked in the name of the IDPs.
On the other hand, the IDPs should continue to empower themselves to pressure the government and the civil society to function as they should.
Duyog Iligan Editorial as of January 8, 2012