THE city government of Ormoc, Leyte does not have a single stick to show three years since receiving P34.08 million from the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) for a temporary shelter project that was supposed to benefit 2,272 families.
When it accepted the money on January 31, 2018, the city government claimed it wanted to provide transitional shelters for the families whose homes were wrecked by the July 6, 2017 Leyte earthquake that also affected other provinces in Eastern and Central Visayas.
As of December 31, 2020, however, government auditors found the money still untouched, and not one of the intended recipient families have been benefited.
Initially, the City Social Welfare and Development officer and the City Disaster Risk Reduction Management officer said neither the construction nor cash-for-work were implemented due to the slow process of finding and purchasing a suitable lot for the construction project.
When a suitable place was found in Barangay Gaas, Ormoc City, the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology certified the area as safe.
The city mayor was authorized by the Sangguniang Panlungsod to purchase the property on September 22, 2017 and a contract to sell was executed between the lot owner and the city government.
The lot owner, however, asked for a higher price, necessitating a resolution that was passed only in May 2018. Initial payment was released only on June 20, 2018.
It took another four months to issue a purchase request for construction materials.
By then inflation hit and the cost of all construction materials have increased so the original unit cost of each temporary shelter had to be adjusted from P15,000 to P29,974.05 — nearly twice the previous estimate.
Some creative rethinking after, the city government said it has reduced the target number of houses by a whopping 60 percent — from 2,272 homes to only 884.
The residents who have lost patience with the delays rebuilt their old homes — even those inside the designated danger zones.
Ironically, a separate project by the National Housing Authority (NHA) aimed at providing permanent housing for the displaced families is now nearing completion.
This prompted the Commission on Audit to propose that the city should re-evaluate whether it still want to continue with a temporary shelter program, three years after it was supposed to start.
Auditors instead recommended that the city government simply return the money to the DSWD.
Acceding to this suggestion, Ormoc City sent a letter to the DSWD informing the latter of its desire to terminate the 2018 MOA which will effectively cancel the non-starter project.
