BY: REY ANTHONY H. CHIU
KATIPUNAN Carmen, Bohol March 26 (PIA) –If the National Housing Authority (NHA) does not get delayed in preparing the subdivision and site development plans, the town could be the first among Bohol towns to put up a formal resettlement site owned by the municipal government.
Carmen town administrator and lawyer Elizer Cago Jr., bared this during the International Organization for Migration (IOM) and Philippine Information Agency (PIA)-Bohol organized Pulong-Pulong sa Komunidad recently amid eager temporary tent and makeshift settlers huddled in a buff, overlooking rice fields in Sitio Datag, barangay Katipunan.
Cago also said NHA asked the town officials to give them three months to put up a site development and subdivision plan to make sure the new site development is orderly and follows national standards.
Cago bared this to update the temporary camp settlers that they might have to prepare to break camp on the last week of March or the first week of April, when NHA shall have presented the plans.
At the Datag Camp, residents of two sitios walked down from the hills where the Mines and Geo-Sciences Bureau has declared for full evacuation due to the risk of land subsidence trend as noted from a long line of land movements from as far as Sitio Malid in Barngay Monte-surte extending to the hills of Sitios Upper Dat-an and Pangog.
Not far from there, residents of nearby barangay Buenavista attested that a whole hill disappeared from view only to be swallowed by a deep sinkhole, after the fateful day of the great earthquake that claimed almost 200 lives and displaced close to 200,000 Boholanos.
Since the earthquake too, Datag Camp rose from makeshift shelters of blankets and curtains until the tarpaulins and tents came with the coming of international humanitarian organizations in emergency response.
Five months later, residents here finally prepare to break camp and move into transitional shelters and permanent units.
The government through the Department of Social Welfare and Development with Habitat for Humanity as well as shelter organizations like IOM, International Federation of the Red Cross, and other consortium of aid groups are putting up in the new resettlement site in Poblacion Sur of this town.
For those residents who are advised to evacuate their former home sites and are not joining the main camp in Poblacion Sur, international shelter organizations are still willing to give them Alternative Temporary Shelter on Sites (ATSS): a package of a temporary shelter with matching toilet facilities, but only after the beneficiaries can show proof of lot ownership, or a legal consent from owners for them to temporarily occupy the lots.
With the assurance from LGU Carmen, residents here are now forming groups to tap livelihood assisting groups to help them find alternative jobs while on a new location.
“If we can be relocated, is there a way we can be helped find new work?” asks a visibly concerned Evelyn Vallentos at the forum.
While IOM is giving out shelter support, the ones we can give is livelihood recovery program, not the full livelihood component, said IOM’s Lionel Dosdos.
Town MSWD representative Ma. Olga however said there is little help the local government can do, and that is a cash for work program for resettlement dwellers, where the government pays workers for odd jobs relative to earthquake recovery.
PIA-Bohol on the other hand assured them that as long as residents are organized, it becomes easy for them to tap livelihood assisting organizations and agencies like TESDA, DOLE, International Labor Organization, and UNDP, who are into the area.
“We need to find livelihood to start picking up our lives and start anew," said barangay chairman Paolo Cajote, who came to the forum with two barangay kagawads. (mbcn/rahc/PIA7-Bohol)