A party-list group vying for a seat in Congress this May welcomed what it called the “timely intervention” of Malacañang in efforts to finish the resettlement housing projects for the thousands of families affected by Typhoon Yolanda.
“It is the LGUs that are on the ground making sure that their constituents benefit from these programs.”
Bahay Party-list first nominee Atty. Naealla Bainto-Aguinaldo on Tuesday said that “national government-LGU (local government unit) coordination is one of the keys to ensuring the completion of these housing projects.”
”A housing program of this magnitude may be spearheaded and funded by the national government, but it is the LGUs that are on the ground making sure that their constituents benefit from these programs,” said the lawyer, who once served as an undersecretary at the Office of the President.
According to Bainto-Aguinaldo, the group supports the proposal of Cabinet Secretary Karlo Nograles, the Yolanda Inter-Agency Task Force head, for LGUs to activate their local inter-agency committees (LIACs), as these serve as the focal structure of coordination and clearing house for relocation and resettlement planning and implementation.
“The LIACs are tasked to determine the scale of resettlement requirements, to formulate a comprehensive relocation and resettlement action plan, to recommend appropriate relocation/resettlement packages and other entitlements for affected families, and to establish the guidelines for selecting beneficiaries,” explained Bainto-Aguinaldo.
“Malaki talaga ang maitutulong ng mga ‘to para matapos na ang mga Yolanda housing projects sa mga apektadong lugar.”
According to an NHA report on the Yolanda Permanent Housing Program, 205,128 housing units are targeted for completion in the “Yolanda” corridor.
“LIACs are tasked to determine the scale of resettlement requirements, to formulate a comprehensive relocation and resettlement action plan.”
Government is targeting the completion of all housing projects by 2020 although most of the units should be finished by the end of 2019.
Last weekend, Nograles met with Leyte mayors and urged them to reactivate LIACs to ensure the completion of Yolanda resettlement housing projects that remained unfinished and were plagued by low occupancy rates.
Bainto-Aguinaldo stressed that low occupancy and transfer rates were a result of the absence of basic utilities, the substandard quality of the units, and the distance of these units from sources of livelihood.
“Kaya mahalaga na magtulungan ang mga NGAs (national government agencies) at mga LGUs. A national-local partnership is necessary to the success of national housing programs, and the administration is doing the right thing in adopting this approach to Yolanda resettlement housing challenges.”