Secretary Judy Taguiwalo clarified her stance on accepting donations and assistance from the private sector and foreign institutions, saying foreign aid is welcome as long as this does not come with “conditions.”
She said the government has enough funds for relief and rehabilitation efforts.
Sen. Ralph Recto said the government has unspent P37 billion in calamity funds as of August this year, which could be used to help the typhoon victims.
Recto said the fund – officially known as the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Fund – came from unused appropriations last year as well as the current year.
For 2015, P14 billion was appropriated for the fund, of which P5 billion remained unused as of December.
The remaining amount was added to the 2016 appropriation of P38.9 billion, raising the fund to P44 billion.
Withdrawals as of end-August amounted to P6.9 billion, leaving a balance of P37 billion.
“The challenge is to open the floodgates of domestic aid funds and not to ask help from abroad,” Recto said.
The typhoons destroyed some P10.2 billion worth of agricultural crops and displaced more than 200,000 families in Cagayan Valley, the Cordilleras, Central Luzon and Ilocos region.
Taguiwalo said the agency continues to distribute relief assistance to the victims. She said the government would continue to provide emergency shelter assistance to the affected families in the next days.
“Emergency shelter assistance should be (treated as) emergency. (It should) not (be given) three years or two years after. So we are doing our best to make sure that the Yolanda experience in terms of delayed provision of emergency shelter assistance would not be repeated,” Taguiwalo said in briefing at Malacañang.
The Department of Social Welfare and Development chief gave assurance that the DSWD would monitor the expiry dates of relief goods.
Agriculture Secretary Emmanuel Piñol said President Duterte has instructed him to study the possibility of restructuring the planting calendar in relation to the effects of climate change.
The President wanted to know if the planting period could be adjusted so farmers can harvest crops before the typhoon season.
He wanted a deeper study on the management of the Cagayan and Chico rivers, which overflowed and destroyed more than P8 billion worth of crops, and proposed dredging and desiltation.
“I was baffled initially because of the great disparity between the loss of lives and the damage to agriculture. There was so much damage to agriculture and minimal to life. The government was prepared for this. The only reason why there was so much damage to agriculture was because we could not relocate the palay, we could not relocate the corn fields,” Piñol said.