For apparently biting more than they can chew, Habitat for Humanity Foundation, (HHF) the organization tasked to build core shelters for earthquake and Yolanda victims but has miserably failed to deliver, is getting the boot.
The October 15 earthquake destroyed 8,083 houses and damaged 34,527 others, requiring some 64 evacuation centers and tents from different agencies and NGOs that served as temporary shelters for more than 40,000 displaced families.
To temporarily settle the earthquake victims and their families, President Benigno Aquino himself promised immediate relief to include food, medicines and core shelters, when he flew over to Bohol immediately a day after the earthquake.
The government commissioned Habitat for Humanity Foundation Incorporated to build 8,083 core shelters: at a combined cost of P70,000 from the government and P18,000 from Habitat for each house.
The core shelters were so designed to afford the displaced families provisional housing for them to gather up and secure their things while rehabilitation works is ongoing, sources at the Department of Social Welfare and Development explained.
Two years after the earthquake, Capitol shelter cluster head Liza Quirog reported that The HHF had finished 1,074 of the 8,083.
She also reported that the government has trimmed down the number to 5,609, for reasons she did not expound. Even then, two years later showed HHF not even coming up with half of the target for core shelters.
On this, no less than DSWD Secretary Corazon Soliman shared the information to the media during a press conference at the Jjs Seafoods Village on Thursday, January 7, that the government is scrapping HHF for another homebuilding organization.
Coming in place to continue the task of building core shelters which may come really belated, is International Organization for Migration (IOM).
IOM has been among the international response organizations which accomplished beyond the usual expectations, completing some 13,000 core shelters of its assessed 79,219 houses damaged by the earthquake.
IOM uses a different damage assessment criteria and is reportedly less stringent than the ones which the government is implementing.
Speaking with Budget Secretary Butch Abad at the Bottom-Up Budgeting local consultations here, Soliman’s statement echoed the government’s apparent frustration over the excruciatingly slow-paced core shelter provision.
“They are not delivering,†Soliman said, during the press conference attended by Department of Budget and Management secretary Butch Abad, Bohol Governor Edgar Chatto, and Association of Barangay Councils Provincial Chair Romulo Cepedoza.
Earlier. HHF blamed the lack of construction materials as the culprit in the negative accomplishments. (rac/PIA-7/Bohol)