THREE years after Super Typhoon “Yolanda” struck Eastern Visayas, schools have been rebuilt and students are back to school, but the teachers have yet to receive the financial assistance promised by the previous administration to rebuild their homes, leaving them deep in debt, according to Reps. Antonio Tinio and France Castro.
Worse, they said, after the teachers contracted loans while waiting for the long-delayed financial assistance, the previous administration downgraded the aid from “totally damaged to partially damaged.”
Some were even excluded as beneficiaries, they said.
More than 10,000 were killed and thousands more were left homeless when “Yolanda,” the strongest typhoon to hit land in history, slammed into Eastern Visayas on Nov. 8, 2013.
Many victims remain homeless and the aid promised them never came.
Tinio said teachers and other government employees were entitled to P100,000 in aid for totally damaged homes and P30,000 for partially damaged homes.
In a joint statement, Tinio and Castro slammed the failure of the Presidential Management Staff and the Department of Education to provide the housing reimbursement assistance to Education employees who survived “Yolanda” three years after it struck.
“We take these agencies to task for failing to deliver on their promise that they will extend financial assistance to survivors who had to repair or rebuild their homes,” Tinio said.
He said the houses of many of the survivors had not been fully repaired or rebuilt as they continued to wait for the second tranche of the aid.
Castro said many who had to contract loans from various sources to make their homes habitable again were now deep in debt.
Tinio and Castro said they received complaints from teachers and other Education employees that they submitted complete liquidation documents three months after they received the first tranche as required by the PMS guidelines, or by the end of 2014 for the earliest recipients.
“We believe that the lag is with the liquidation in the regional office level and the PMS evaluation. Adding to the delay is the very late release by the PMS and DepEd of the aid to some of the beneficiaries, some of whom report receiving their first half only this year,” the two said in their statement.
“We therefore urge the PMS and DepEd to speed up the liquidation, evaluation and release of the entire assistance to our teachers, non-teaching personnel and other DepEd employees. Three years is too long to keep the survivors of major disasters hanging.”
