Calamity victims in Quezon and Aurora

Manila Times
Wednesday, November 30, 2005

Calamity victims hit govt for neglect
By Ronnie E. Calumpita, Reporter

A YEAR after a series of landslides and flash floods hit Quezon and Aurora, thousands of displaced residents are kept waiting for the logs promised by the government to build their houses.

Melicio Rotaquio, a Dumagat leader of the Tulay Ugnayan ng Organisasyon Katutubo sa Sierra Madre-Quezon, said other lucky people are benefiting from logs that had been recovered from the floods.

“The ones who are benefiting are only the rich and logging concessionaires who own sawmills where the logs are processed,” he said in an interview.

He added: “Until now we don’t have our own houses. The government failed to provide us resettlement areas and livelihood assistance.”

Rotaquio, from Barangay San Marcelino, General Nakar, Quezon, along with 80 other calamity victims, held a rally at the Department of Environment and Natural Resources premises Tuesday to oppose the reopening of logging in Quezon and Aurora.

Clemente Bautista, national coordinator of the Kalikasan-People’s Network for the Environment, said at least nine holders of integrated forest management agreements in Quezon and Aurora were allowed to conduct logging in the two provinces.

Last year’s landslides and flash floods claimed at least 1,600 lives and displaced more than 53,000 families. Among those who died were Rotaquio’s brother, Victorio, his wife and two children.

Environment Secretary Michael Defensor had said that his department would donate the logs to the Department of Social Welfare and Development for the calamity victims.

Defensor said the DENR had authorized sawmills to process the logs before turning them over to the DSWD to build houses for the calamity victims.

He said logs that had been retrieved were accounted for.