By John Tria

As mainstream media feasted on comments on the vice president’s legs during the anniversary of typhoon Yolanda, public attention on these only brought renewed focus to what her predecessors from her party were unable to do: finish the job of housing the victims of the typhoon, billed as the worst to hit human beings.

Getting the work moving would have been a decent task for her to undertake, given that she already has had more than 100 days to do something to speed up the process of delivering the homes for which substantial funds have already been allocated by the previous government that she hails from. That she comes with high expectations to perform is an understatement. After all, Robredo’s Naga is held up as a paragon of getting things done.

Yet, what we have heard thus far are but the results of her own audit, which revealed that from a target of more than 205,000 shelters, only 20,893 houses had been built, or roughly 1% as of March, 2016. (http://www.philstar.com/nation/2016/09/18/1624843/robredo-only-1-houses-yolanda-victims-completed)

Why has it taken so long to house them? Was it for lack of funds?

To answer this, it should be noted that the previous government’s Budget and Management Chief Butch Abad admitting that of the “P150 billion for rebuilding the communities hit by typhoon Yolanda, we have released a total of P93.87 billion as of October 23, 2015” (http://www.gov.ph/2015/11/04/data-funds-yolanda-projects-online/).

What also raises questions about the fact that according to the full report of government’s Foreign Aid Transparency hub, 17.23 Billion pesos were received from various foreign sources including NGOs.Both amounts add up to a total of about 111 billion already deployed to serve some 1,473,251 million families, giving a provision of about Php77,000 thousand per family. These figures being estimates based on available data, the public is encouraged to verify them.

Knowing this forces us even more to ask how only 1% of the shelter requirements have been provided after three years. Having the funds available, it is ripe to examine just how much attention we put in the lives and welfare of those who continue to languish as a result of a terrible natural calamity. In short, so much more could have probably been done.

A divisive election passed and the Vice President supposedly in charge of all housing apparently was unable to create a dent in meeting the needs of the families embroiled in the already three year wait. All, these, in spite of the “build back better” battlecry of the past government ran by her own political party. Many expected her to immediately jumpstart the construction.

Yet, did her own audit reveal that the government of her own party was largely unable to shelter many of the victims? She now faces the same constituency her running mate Mar Roxas proudly proclaimed to have served when he supposedly led preparation and relief efforts immediately before and after the calamity. Of course, the rest is history and lore. While he remained Secretary of the Interior for years after Yolanda, many of these house did even begin construction. Whose houses, if any were ”built back better?”

All these said, must the public expect better performance? Of course. Can we move faster to build these houses? I sure hope so.

All this is important for many of us from Mindanao who were the first to lend our support to millions who happen to be our relatives from the Visayas. We all expect that whatever held up the “build back better” of PNOY would be expedited soon, and completed within clear bounds of time. The victims have sufffered enough. They deserve no less.