The Philippines is back to its normal way of life now after all the storms washed everything that came along its way for the past weeks. We had a double whammy for storms for that matter, we had the Typhoon Ondoy which banished almost all of Metro Manila residents and followed by typhoon Pepeng which destroyed almost all of Northern Luzon, both had the propensity to wreak havoc to every land, home and people their stormy eyes got hooked into.
Fingers started to point to whoever it can blame after the storm. Nobody is willing to take on the blame for the more than 400 dead people drowned by the flood.
A lot of wise proposition came up all over on how to prevent the same tragedy to happen again; and all these are really good to reckon with but all are too late to apply. The damaged has already been done and no amount of repairing can be applied to make it be undone because it has already happened. The best way to cherish the experience is to learn from it.
Looking back into the wise proposals made by different sectors, there were those who proposed to shut the huge dam which the dam operators don't agree, there are those who proposed to relocate the informal settlers to free the waterways and unclogged it but may sound so impossible right now due to economic reasons. These dams are what they say contributed much of the flooding because as soon as it opens up its spillways, the underlying rivers are unable to contain the deluge which in effect floods the surrounding plain.
I would like to believe personally that unclogging the waterways may be the best as of the moment. by this we can rid of these informal settlers from being vulnerable to any dangers that these waterways will cause them. The informal settlers by the way are those people poor enough to get themselves a decent home and they just settle to occupy vacant lots and build shanties for temporary shelter.
The government is posed to spend more than 32 billion pesos in 10 years just to relocate all these people to a more humane environment. There is also the question whether these relocation sites are conducive to work. usually based on previous government projects of relocating these informal settlers, they are lead to sites where no human would dare live, no water, no lights and no livelihood; but the proponents were brandishing these as a milestone for their administration. As a result, all these settlers will just simply turn these small dwelling places to cash and go back to squatting. That is how they are, are they pitiful? for the legitimate ones, yes they are!
Avery elementary approach that I can think of in resolving the relocation issue is this. since the government will have to plan and spend hard tax money to relocate these people, then they can start acting as if they are urban planners this time for these simple ones. When a land developer works, they make a feasibility study of the project they are planning to make. Of course there is question of how many houses to be built and the number of families to accommodate, then start from there. They can survey and find out what do these people have in common, like their skills, education, gender, ages and so on and then probably the government can gather some willing investors to relocate as well and start anew in this area with these people as their customer and probably their workers as well. What I am pointing out here is practical community reconstruction.
Fingers started to point to whoever it can blame after the storm. Nobody is willing to take on the blame for the more than 400 dead people drowned by the flood.
A lot of wise proposition came up all over on how to prevent the same tragedy to happen again; and all these are really good to reckon with but all are too late to apply. The damaged has already been done and no amount of repairing can be applied to make it be undone because it has already happened. The best way to cherish the experience is to learn from it.
Looking back into the wise proposals made by different sectors, there were those who proposed to shut the huge dam which the dam operators don't agree, there are those who proposed to relocate the informal settlers to free the waterways and unclogged it but may sound so impossible right now due to economic reasons. These dams are what they say contributed much of the flooding because as soon as it opens up its spillways, the underlying rivers are unable to contain the deluge which in effect floods the surrounding plain.
I would like to believe personally that unclogging the waterways may be the best as of the moment. by this we can rid of these informal settlers from being vulnerable to any dangers that these waterways will cause them. The informal settlers by the way are those people poor enough to get themselves a decent home and they just settle to occupy vacant lots and build shanties for temporary shelter.
The government is posed to spend more than 32 billion pesos in 10 years just to relocate all these people to a more humane environment. There is also the question whether these relocation sites are conducive to work. usually based on previous government projects of relocating these informal settlers, they are lead to sites where no human would dare live, no water, no lights and no livelihood; but the proponents were brandishing these as a milestone for their administration. As a result, all these settlers will just simply turn these small dwelling places to cash and go back to squatting. That is how they are, are they pitiful? for the legitimate ones, yes they are!
Avery elementary approach that I can think of in resolving the relocation issue is this. since the government will have to plan and spend hard tax money to relocate these people, then they can start acting as if they are urban planners this time for these simple ones. When a land developer works, they make a feasibility study of the project they are planning to make. Of course there is question of how many houses to be built and the number of families to accommodate, then start from there. They can survey and find out what do these people have in common, like their skills, education, gender, ages and so on and then probably the government can gather some willing investors to relocate as well and start anew in this area with these people as their customer and probably their workers as well. What I am pointing out here is practical community reconstruction.
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