In an interview in Tacloban City on May 20, President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. falsely claimed that “nothing was done” in the past two administrations to rehabilitate the areas devastated by Super Typhoon Yolanda (international name Haiyan), which struck the country in November 2013.
STATEMENT
When asked about the status of the rehabilitation work on Maharlika Highway – a 3,380-kilometer network of roads, expressways, bridges, and ferry services connecting the islands of Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao – Marcos said the project is part of his administration’s continuing rehabilitation and recovery plan.
He further said:
“Hindi natin masasabi na nakapag-fully recover na tayo sa Yolanda. (We cannot say we have fully recovered from Yolanda) So, all those rehabilitation, you know, we only really started two years ago because nothing was done in the previous administration, nothing was done in the administration before that. So, 12 years on, ngayon pa lang talaga natin inaasikaso ng mabuti. (It is only now that we are really working on this.)”
Source: RTVMalacanang, Media Interview in Tacloban City 5/20/2024, May 20, 2024, watch from 03:33 to 04:01
FACT
While the plan to rehabilitate the portion of Maharlika Highway in Eastern Visayas was approved by Marcos last March, there have been resettlement and reconstruction efforts since the Aquino administration to help the Visayas region recover from the onslaught of the super typhoon.
Nearly a year after the tragedy that killed at least 6,300 people and affected more than a million families, former president Benigno Aquino III approved the comprehensive rehabilitation and recovery plan for the Yolanda-hit areas submitted by then-rehabilitation secretary Panfilo Lacson. The implementation was focused on different clusters including infrastructure, social services, resettlement and livelihood.
Under this plan, the government intended to construct 205,128 disaster-resilient housing units to relocate families living in hazard-prone areas. In November 2014, the National Housing Authority (NHA) identified the site for 160,000 housing units to meet this housing requirement.
When Aquino’s term ended and Rodrigo Duterte assumed office in 2016, the Commission on Audit (COA) reported that a total of 42,599 housing units had been completed.
Throughout the decade, the agency repeatedly flagged the NHA for delays in the construction of the target housing units. The delays were commonly attributed to “various suspension orders, time extensions, and variation orders.”
By 2022, the end of Duterte’s term and the beginning of the Marcos administration, 166,034 houses were constructed. COA’s performance audit of the agency that year revealed that 31% of the completed housing units remained unoccupied.
In a statement reported by GMA News’ 24 Oras, Lacson said he did his part and delivered on his assignment as Aquino’s presidential assistant for rehabilitation and recovery.
“Sadly, I did not have the authority to implement nor did I have any say in the release of funds for the rehabilitation and recovery efforts,” he explained.
