ReliefWeb

By Oliver T. Baccay

TUGUEGARAO CITY, Cagayan, Oct. 14 (PIA) - - The Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) region 2 has already released P644 million for the Emergency Shelter Assistance (ESA) and the Cash-for-Work (CFW) to the identified qualified victims of typhoon “Ompong” which struck Northern Luzon last year.

Franco Lopez, chief of the Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Division, said there were 15, 192 targeted family-beneficiaries based on the list of evaluated qualified beneficiaries for the totally damaged houses, however, there were only 14, 858 actual grantees with a percentage accomplishment of 97.80.

He said Cagayan province, which was heavily hit by Ompong, has received the bulk of the ESA fund totaling to P439.4 million for the 14, 648 families, followed by Isabela with P5.5 million for 165 families; Nueva Vizcaya with P630,000 for 21 families, and Quirino with P150,000 for five family-beneficiaries.

Lopez also said that there were 13, 741 family-beneficiaries who received a total of P139.7 million for those with partially damaged houses. The province of Cagayan got the biggest chunk of share with P129.9 million while Isabela got P9.6 million.

He also explained that the beneficiaries for the partially damaged houses are just the initial recipients because the requested fund for the recovery of the identified partially damaged houses was not yet released.

“The fund used for the partially damaged was actually modified only from the fund of the totally damaged houses since the beneficiaries for the totally damaged houses decreased after the thorough validation we did,” Lopez said.

He also explained that “double entry” of names as beneficiaries in the list is also one for the reasons why there is still a percentage of unreleased ESA assistance while other beneficiaries were not in their residence when DSWD employees visited them to hand-over the cash assistance.

On the other hand, a total of P44.3 million was released for the 13, 058 individuals who were beneficiaries of the Cash-for-Work program who were also victims of typhoon “Ompong”.

The beneficiaries of the cash-for-work were those who worked for the reconstruction and repair of their own houses as one of the interventions following the devastating typhoon that affected their livelihood. (MDCT/OTB/PIA 2-Cagayan)