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By News Desk in Cagayan de Oro City/Philippine Daily Inquirer | ANN – 20 hours ago

 

Cagayan de Oro City (The Korea Herald/ANN) – After making the rounds of funeral parlors for three days, college student Christine Dalay’s search for her mother finally ended Tuesday-in a garbage dump. There, on top of a heap of garbage, lay the missing 48-year-old woman.

“It’s really painful,” Dalay said on seeing her mother dumped like garbage in the sanitary landfill. “I took good care of her when she was still alive. I can’t go near the bodies because I didn’t want to see my mother looking like that.”

A Philippine Daily Inquirer check showed there were at least 30 bodies in the dump, exposed to the elements and swarming with flies.

Mayor Vicente Emano has ordered that the bodies which overwhelmed funeral parlors could no longer accept be brought to the landfill. Funeral homes, most of them without water supply and running out of formalin, have complained of the stench from unclaimed bodies.

Emano defended his decision. “There’s no other place for them and the funeral homes have declined to keep them,” he said.

Emano said the stench of bodies had forced his government to move the corpses away from residential communities. But he explained that the use of the dump was only temporary and that the bodies would be eventually brought to Cagayan de Oro City Memorial Park.

The city government is building a chamber that can accommodate 200 bodies, which will be buried in individual coffins.

Amid the desperate shortage of coffins, the Philippine Navy last night prepared to ship about 500 caskets to storm-ravaged areas in Mindanao, with most of the wooden boxes built in the Pampanga town of Sto. Tomas, the so-called “coffin capital” of Central Luzon.

The coffins were aboard the BRP Dagupan City, a logistics support vessel expected to arrive in Mindanao on Christmas Eve.

Coffinmakers in Sto. Tomas worked through the night to build the needed coffins, which were made of plywood and painted in white, according to Mayor Joselito Naguit.

Relatives outraged

The landfill was also the place where election paraphernalia were recovered during the May 2010 elections in which Emano was declared the mayoralty winner.

The dumping of the bodies there provoked outrage among families and friends of those still missing.

Joy Grace Moli, who went to the city dump to look for a missing classmate, said the least the city government could do was respect the dead. “What do they think of these people? Garbage?” Moli said.

President Benigno Aquino III, who flew to Cagayan de Oro on Tuesday, told reporters that bodies should never be brought to a landfill as this would deprive them of dignity and add more pain to families.

“I don’t know of any plans of anybody being put into landfills. I don’t know where these reports are coming from,” he said, apparently unaware it was Emano who ordered it. “Whoever put the deceased in that situation will have to answer to a court of law,” the President said.

Refrigerated vans

Philippine Red Cross chairman Richard Gordon said the government could rent refrigerated vans to slow down the decay of the flood victims. But he said the decision lay with the city government.

Emano rejected Gordon’s suggestion, saying there were no refrigerated vans in the city.

But a resident, who refused to be named, said Emano could have simply checked the international container terminal in Tagoloan, Misamis Oriental province, where refrigerated vans are just nearby.

Emano’s brother, Pedro, is the mayor of Tagoloan.

Tedious process

Also on Tuesday, forensic experts from the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) flew in from Manila for the “profiling” of the bodies.

In Iligan City, the city government has started the mass burial of unclaimed bodies after forensic experts from the NBI finished a postmortem examination on them. The examination included the taking of fingerprints, dental profiling and DNA sampling.

Dr. Reynaldo Ramiro, head of the forensics team, said each cadaver would be buried in a way that it would be easy to retrieve them after a matching process with the missing.

On the average, the examination would take an hour per cadaver because “the process is tedious,” Ramiro said.

Apartment tombs

There has been a clamor for the immediate burial of the unidentified decomposing bodies. Instead of a mass grave, authorities built tombs “to give dignity to the dead.”

Two two-level “tomb apartments” were constructed at the Palao Public Cemetery by local government employees, who volunteered their time on Monday despite it being a Muslim holiday.

Msgr. Jemar Vera-Cruz, vicar general of the Iligan diocese, said there would no longer be elaborate ceremonies but only the essential rites of a final blessing and prayers.

Most of the dead were women and children who drowned when floods triggered by Sendong gushed into homes while people were asleep.

Call for volunteers

In Iligan, Mayor Lawrence Cruz called on government employees not badly hit by the flood to volunteer their time for relief work, including making coffins.

Even the largest funeral parlor in Iligan, Capin Funeral Homes, was looking for more coffins, needing about 70 more.

Danilo Capin, owner of the parlor, said the delivery of the coffins from Cagayan de Oro was delayed because the caskets had to be cleaned of mud as the maker’s shop was hit by flood.

With funeral parlors overwhelmed, authorities in Iligan on Monday organized the first mass burial of the dead.

“For public health purposes, we’re doing this. The bodies are decomposing and there is no place where we can place them, not in an enclosed building, not in a gymnasium,” Mayor Cruz said.

In Negros Oriental province, the death toll from the storm has reached 37, while three were missing and 247 were injured, according to the local disaster council.

No flood warning, high tide, darkness

By Inquirer Staff
Philippine Daily Inquirer

 

The absence of a flood warning, high tide, darkness and a false sense of security proved disastrous for people of northern Mindanao when Tropical Storm “Sendong” came over the weekend.

Add illegal logging, rapid urbanization and mining, and the result was deadly for residents of Cagayan de Oro and Iligan cities, government and Red Cross officials said.

Entire villages were washed away, homes flattened, bridges broken and vehicles upended.

The death toll from the flash floods on Sunday rose to at least 711 in Mindanao. Hundreds remained missing.

The Philippine Red Cross (PRC) said it was a combination of factors that led to the tragedy.

“It’s unusual for Mindanao; a month’s worth of rainfall fell in only a few hours; people were already asleep; the storm hit pineapple plantations that don’t absorb water; it was high tide and waterways were heavily silted. It was unprecedented and overwhelming,” said PRC secretary general Gwendolyn Pang.

In Cagayan de Oro, the bodies, many bloated and bluish and frozen in grotesque poses, continued to pile up in funeral homes. Senior Supt. Gerardo Rosales, city police chief, said 474 bodies had been recovered. A total of 482 persons remained missing.

Officials said 214 died in Iligan, 15 in Bukidnon, five in Compostela Valley and three in Zamboanga del Norte.

The government and the Red Cross appealed for help to feed, clothe and house more than 35,000 people huddled in evacuation centers as soldiers battled to recover bodies.

Presidential spokesperson Edwin Lacierda said that President would fly to the devastated areas on Tuesday.

 

Deforestation

Nereus Acosta, presidential adviser on environment, said the deforestation of watersheds in Lanao del Norte and Bukidnon, which feed into the major rivers of Mindanao, had worsened the effects of heavy rains.

Since there were fewer trees to hold water and prevent erosion, the flow of rain water from upstream to the lowland areas turned to be stronger and more destructive.

“We can really see how vulnerable we are. When you tamper with the watersheds and the forests, we become vulnerable,” Acosta said.

Acosta said small-scale and illegal mining played a role, too, in the tragedy although it was “minor” compared to deforestation.

He noted there was some small-scale mining near the city, which could have contributed to the siltation of the river.

Leo Jasareno, Mines and Geosciences Bureau chief, said the topography of the two cities also rendered them prone to massive flooding. These are low-lying areas with reduced capacity to accommodate rushing water from the deforested upstream rivers.

Urbanization

Jasareno said the two cities’ capacity to hold water had been reduced due to rapid urbanization. This decreased the area for water runoff and caused the siltation of the Cagayan River, he said.

“The tributaries could not hold the load from Cagayan River. It has to go somewhere,” he said.

Acosta also noted that the heavy rains from Sendong caught the local officials unawares. While Mindanao receives rain at this time of the year, typhoons, which often move northward to the Visayas or Luzon, usually do not pose a threat.

Some local officials became “complacent” and it appeared that the Cagayan River did not have a warning system to alert authorities and residents of overspilling, Acosta said.

“They said there had been floods before but nobody died. We’ve had floods for the past two Christmases now,” an exasperated Acosta said.

Less water than Ondoy’s

Northern Mindanao usually experiences some rains at this time of the year but not as much as the downpour dumped by Sendong.

The Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration (Pagasa) said Sendong carried less rain than Tropical Storm “Ondoy,” which put 80 percent of Manila underwater.

Ondoy poured 300 millimeters of rain in six hours. Sendong, on the other hand, dumped 180 mm on Lumbia Airport in Misamis Oriental in a span of 24 hours starting at 8 a.m. of Dec. 16, according to Pagasa data.

The National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council (NDRRMC) said residents of areas in the path of Sendong had not been warned about the extraordinarily large volume of rainfall expected from the storm.

“There was no (warning) about the amount of rainfall. But Pagasa was accurate about the passage of the storm, about the coverage of areas that could possibly be affected by rains,” said Edgardo Ollet, NDRRMC operations center chief.

He said the agency passed on Pagasa’s storm warning advisory to local disaster management councils of the affected areas in Mindanao and the Visayas.

But the local councils evidently did not expect flash floods of Ondoy-like proportions.

“They did not prepare for this level or intensity of the storm because these places had not experienced the level of typhoons like those felt in Luzon,” Ollet said.

There were reports that local disaster councils had not been convened before Sendong’s arrival, with local officials being quoted as saying that storms don’t usually pass their way.

Educate people

The PRC urged local government units in the area to be prepared for disasters by ensuring that people know how to handle disaster situations.

“The best way to prepare is educate people about the effects of the changing climate in their own language. And to communicate that they can help reduce the risk of disaster and hazards. Community people should be empowered with knowledge and information as well as training,” Pang said.

PRC chair Richard Gordon said lessons had been learned from previous floods “but the storms nowadays are getting stronger and there is insufficiency in the arrival of information about them.”

The flash floods came in the dead of the night and during high tide.

PRC data showed that 20 towns and cities reported damage to life and property due to floods and landslides. A total of 75 villages were affected, including 18 in Compostela Valley; 17 each in Cagayan de Oro and Zamboanga del Norte; 15 in Iligan; and eight in Dumaguete.

Accountability

Deputy presidential spokesperson Abigail Valte said the government would do an assessment, including who should be held accountable for the massive loss of lives.

“At this point, we should not focus first on accountability but rather on helping [the victims],” Valte said.

She acknowledged “conflicting” reports on whether proper warnings had been given on time. But she noted that Malacañang had gotten as early as Dec. 14 Pagasa’s advice for people in areas to be affected by Sendong to prepare.

Despite the warnings, some people did not heed them because they did not want to leave their homes and because their areas were not prone to flooding, Valte said.

Cagayan de Oro Rep. Rufus Rodriguez urged the President to lay down the ground rules for forced evacuation to prevent loss of lives in disaster areas.

Rodriguez said it was about time the government used the military and police to compel residents to leave their homes.

Survivors

In Iligan, 10 survivors floating in the waters for at least 30 hours were rescued eight miles off the coast of Initao, Misamis Oriental, on Sunday morning.

The Philippine Coast Guard, in a report, said the survivors were all from the city’s Barangay Hinaplanon. It added that several bodies were found near the area where the survivors had been plucked.

Employing volunteers among its fisherfolk, the local governments of Kauswagan and Bacolod in Lanao del Norte also deployed sea patrols to scour the waters.

Kauswagan Mayor Rommel Arnado said he organized eight patrols after receiving information some fishermen saw people still floating in the sea.

On Saturday, many of the survivors rescued and bodies recovered were from the waters off the coasts of Lanao del Norte and Misamis Oriental towns near Iligan.

The city social welfare and development office said 447 Iligan residents were still missing.

Bukidnon

In Bukidnon, at least 15 people died and dozens of others, including a  police official, were missing.

Eleven died in Baungon municipality while four others drowned in Libona town as torrential rains swelled rivers and submerged 32 villages until Sunday, according to Arsenio Alagenio, provincial disaster risk reduction management head.

One of those missing was Insp. Charlito Penuliar, leader of a nine-man rescue team from the police regional office in northern Mindanao. He was swept by floodwaters as he crossed the Bubunawan River, which separates Baungon and Libona towns, Alagenio said.

“His head bobbed twice as he was swept by the rampaging river, and moments later he was gone,” the disaster official said.

All the victims died from the flood although minor landslides in the land-locked province were reported. Alagenio said some of the dead were swept out to the sea and found among the bodies recovered in Bonbon, Cagayan de Oro.

Water crisis

An impending water crisis is looming as the Cagayan de Oro Water District (COWD) is yet to reestablish water connection to several affected areas in the city.

COWD chair Joel Baldelovar said the water supply had been reduced to 20 percent of the 300 million cubic liters it used to supply to the city.

Councilor Dante Pajo, chair of the city’s health committee, called on residents to boil their drinking water.

Residents have been lining up at water refilling stations across the city. Fire volunteers have started rationing water.

Valte said the provinces devastated by Sendong were in desperate need of clean and potable water as well as portable toilets.

She said the social welfare department had started to send bottled water to Mindanao. Manila Water sent water tankers and the Local Water Utilities Administration will soon bring “portable potable water canisters to replace the water systems in Cagayan de Oro temporarily,” she said.

Iligan was in need of portalets in evacuation centers, Valte said, noting this was mentioned by Mayor Lawrence Tan.

She said Maynilad had offered 1,500 500-ml water bottles while the Red Cross had offered collapsible water containers.

Gordon said 1,700 aid parcels containing ready-to-eat food and nonfood items, such as blankets, utensils and drinking cups were on their way to Cagayan de Oro and Iligan from the PRC chapter in Davao City.

Two water sanitation and filtration units, each with a capacity of 3,000 liters an hour, were on their way to Cagayan de Oro and Iligan to provide evacuees with clean drinking water, Gordon said.

Sendong, with gusts of up to 80 km per hour, was hovering about 60 km west of Puerto Princesa, Palawan, and was expected to move out of Philippine waters late on Sunday. Reports from JB R. Deveza, Bobby Lagsa, Ryan D. Rosauro, Richel V. Umel and Frinston L. Lim, Inquirer Mindanao; Kristine L. Alave, Dona Z. Pazzibugan, Jerome Aning, Christine O. Avendaño, Gil Cabacungan Jr. and Jaymee Gamil in Manila; Redempto Anda, Inquirer Southern Luzon; and AFP and Reuters

By Stella A. Estremera

Friday, December 2, 2011

DAVAO CITY — A policy paper by the Ateneo de Manila University School of Governance (ADMUSoG) points to official records that show the mining industry does not deliver the promises of economic boom and job generation that those pushing for mining operations in Mindanao, among them National Government officials, are always saying.

In the paper entitled “Is there a future for mining in the Philippines?” released just Friday by ADMUSoG, a copy of which was emailed to Sun.Star Davao, it was pointed out that employment generation as claimed by those pushing for mining is but a drop based on official records at that.

Based on the Mines and Geosciences Bureau (MGB), mining and quarrying sector has not even breached one percent in terms of employment contribution to the national total.

“Recent data has shown that it has been 0.5 percent since 2008 until 2010. So far, for the first half of 2011, contribution has been reported as 0.6 percent (in contrast to agriculture at 33 percent in 2011),” it said, adding even in other parts of the world, mining is a low employment generator.

“The Tampakan project, with expected investments of $5.9 billion, will provide only 2,000 permanent jobs,” it said.

The sector’s contribution to other sectors is also very small as compared to what other sectors are contributing.

Citing economist and former National Economic Development Authority Director General Cielito Habito’s paper for the Asian Development Bank in 2010 entitled, “An Agenda for High and Inclusive Growth in the Philippines”, it underlined the fact that labor compensation in the mining sector accounts only for 13.3 percent as compared to the average 20.7 percent in all other sectors.

“The sector has a backward linkage index of only 0.46, meaning there is relatively little input from other domestic industries; even the forward linkage of 0.82 indicates that the sector is below average compared to all other sectors in generating further domestic economic activities. Minerals are being exported with little value-adding that could have generated further employment and industry linkage,” the report said.

This simply means that benefits from mining operations do not trickle down nor ripple much.

MGB records show exports of minerals and mineral products averaged 4.5 percent of total exports and was at 4.3 percent in the first half of 2011, while exports of non-metallic minerals was a meager 0.4 percent for the past four years.

Agriculture, in comparison, has been contributing eight percent, while the main economic drivers remain to be the manufacturing and service sector, which contributes 50 percent of gross domestic product.

Admitting that there are few available studies on poverty incidence in mining areas, these few show no perceptible improvement in the lives of local residents where mining operations operate.

“In a recent study by Balisacan (Balisacan, Arcenio, 2011, Multidimensional Poverty in the Philippines: New Measures, Evidence, and Policy Implications), the poverty incidence among individuals engaged in mining has continued to increase, compared to workers in other sectors. In 2006, income poverty in the sector was at 34.64 and by 2009 it increased to 48.71,” the policy brief said, adding: “The mining sector also shows a high deprivation in health and education compared to other industries.”

It then points to a 2003 poverty incidence report by the National Statistical Coordination Board (NSCB) where Bataraza in Palawan, where Rio Tuba has been operating nickel mining for the past three decades, poverty incidence is twice the national rate.

Bataraza is also in the bottom 25 percent of municipalities on poverty incidence, the report said.

What cannot be denied is that benefits from mining operations like new roads and other infrastructure is only while there is something to be mined. There are no economic benefits after the mines stop operating because the ore have all been extracted.

While all these and more seem to describe mining as based on official records, there is no study that quantifies social and environment costs.

Citing the recent attack on mining facilities in Surigao del Norte by the New People’s Army (NPA), the study said government should have an accounting of how much it costs to provide security for these operations, in terms of logistics and manpower for the Armed Forces of the Philippines and the Philippine National Police.

But there is no such data available. Operations that affect coastal areas are also costing local governments, like the ones in Negros Occidental and Ilocos provinces, because these have to invest in coastal ecosystem protection, but again, there is no study that measures this as part of the cost of mining.

Among other facts disregarded, the paper states, “Losses to government and community investments are not accounted for in the decision to allow coastal mining.”

Given the facts of how little mining contributes and what is not being measured in terms of its costs to local governments and communities as well as the National Government, the paper continued: “Is this a responsible thing to do – to base decisions on guesswork? Should we exercise caution instead? How much benefit will we forego if we decide to exercise precaution? Can we afford to gamble our future for so little benefit that extends to so few? Can we afford the cost of conflicts that leave so many with ill feeling, which could prevent cooperation in more inclusive productive activities? Unless we gain a better handle on the value of what we lose in exchange for mining, we have no rational basis for decision-making.”

More so, it urged the National Government to recognize the rights of indigenous peoples and local governments to say no to mining, as talks are growing louder that President Benigno Aquino III will be coming up with a new mining policy that will curtail the role of locals in deciding the fate of big mining companies that intend to dig up their mountains.

“We, the current generation, are potential beneficiaries of mining operations. But we must remain aware of our responsibility as caretakers of our nation’s wealth for the enjoyment of our children and their children. The country’s mineral resources are limited and exhaustible. Do we really have to pressure ourselves to cash in on the benefits now? The Ateneo School of Government’s position is that the country could wait for better conditions and negotiate better terms on the basis of better information,” the paper pointed out.

Stating that ADMUSoG is neither for nor against mining, it stressed that it does not shy away from “taking a principled stand on issues, after rigorous examination of facts and engaging stakeholders with different perspectives in honest and candid discussions.” (Sun.Star Davao/Sunnex)