Panay Team (Iloilo and Capiz)

Panay Team (Iloilo and Capiz).

Objective 1: Quick Assessment

Regional and provincial secondary data

Panay Island has 4 provinces (Iloilo, Capiz, Aklan and Antique). According our infopackestimatesIloilo and Capiz are the most affected. This was confirmed during the mission and in particular the northern part of Iloilo and the whole of Capiz. We therefore concentrated our assessment on these areas. In total it seems 45 municipalities are affected (6 in Aklan, 9 in Antique, 13 in Iloilo and all 17 in Capiz). In Capiz, 144,710 households are affected (692,071 persons), 98,438 houses are totally damaged while 33,010 houses are partly damaged according to data from DOLE. Enterprises and small businesses in agriculture and fisheries are affected (rice, poultry, fishponds) which in turn affects the income of workers depending on these industries. Commerce in the towns is not much affected.

On day 1 we participated in the Regional Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council (DRRMC) meeting. As it happened both chairmen (Usec Panadero from DILG and Congressman Jerry Trenas who used to be Governor of Iloilo City when we demonstrated the community contracting work after typhoon Frank) were familiar with ILO EIIP work and strongly advocated for emergency employment. The table below provides an overview of activities and plans of different government agencies in region 6 (islands of Panay, Guimaras and Negros).

As of 18 November 530,000 families (34% of the population) have been affected in the region (2 million people); 245,000 houses are fully damaged and 212,000 houses are partially damaged. Damage to agriculture is 3.1 billion Peso while damage to fisheries is 1.2 billion Peso. The validity of data was questioned by various speakers.

DOLE / 5m Peso from regional funds for emergency employment (1.8m Iloilo; 1.5m Capiz; 0.7m Aklan; 0.6m Negros Occidental and 0.4m Antique). Regional wage level is Peso 277/day. DOLE plans to immediately assist 1,200 workers. Activities will start in a week’s time.
DA / 5m Peso food packs (eggs, sardines, noodles, rice); 142 million Peso is needed for recovery of the fishery sector. DA would have a recovery workshop for both agriculture and fisheries during the week of the mission. Irrigation system damaged is estimated at 37.5 million.
DPWH / 495m Peso damage to roads and bridges, mostly in Iloilo. Haven’t assessed the impact on other infrastructure yet. All national roads are open.
DOH / 158 deaths with 18 people missing. 2657 injured. Medicine distribution 3m Peso. 49 health facilities out of 142 are partly damaged. 2 facilities have been destroyed. 37.5m Peso is needed for repairs. 35.6m is needed for additional medicine. Oil spill in Estancia could affect the health of over a thousand families living near the spill area.
NFA / Rice distribution to over 25,000 households. Power outage may cause problems in processing palay in affected areas.
NHA / Established 4 task forces (one in each province).
DSWD / Detailed data will be provided at a later stage. 180,000 food packs distributed. Proposals to central office: 1.9m food packs, 1.4m relief operations, another 6.2m for relief operations and 5.2m cash for work. 36 LGUs are among the hardest hit. Cash for work will focus on these employing 50 people in 50 municipalities for 10 days.
DOE / 90% of schools affected. In Iloilo 1,300 classrooms with main damage and 1,200 classrooms with minor damage. No data yet received from Capiz. Large number of students is not attending classes as both homes and schools are affected. Temporary classrooms will be established and a school feeding programme may attract students back to school. Cost of repairs in Iloilo is estimated at 500m Peso. Initial estimate from Capiz of 200m Peso is deemed too low and may be around 1 billion Peso.
AFP / Providing logistical support (trucks, helicopters). Team from Canada is providing engineering support. Most international organizations focus on Roxas and Capiz. NGOs are helping but no information about their activities.

DILG undersecretary Panadero presented the 4 months recovery strategy which includes 3 components:

1. restore lifelines ( power, water, fuel, communication, transport)
2. provide shelter
3. livelihood support including cash for work (fisher folk and farmers)

We had a brief talk about the SLRF allocation for rural road labour-based maintenance in the Pablo areas and the undersecretary suggested that a similar model may be used for Yolanda areas.

Field observations – Municipal level

As earlier suggested our municipal data does not allow for an identification of the most affected municipalities (in relative terms) as it gives us absolute numbers. Smaller municipalities, often more remote with more vulnerable and poor households, may be worse affected but have a relatively lower number of affected families. This was confirmed during the field visits.

From Iloilo we drove north to Roxas city (approx. 2 ½ hours) passing through a number of affected municipalities. We saw no immediate signs of damage in Pototan in Iloilo (although it ranked high in terms of number of affected people). Damage becomes apparent when approaching the Iloilo-Capiz border (in a way the coastal cities on Panay may have escaped the worst of the typhoon as it passed over the island through the least populated zone). Pasi city seems slightly affected. After Pasi city the area is moderately affected with gradually more damage to crops and trees (and agriculture). The municipalities of Dumarao, Cuartero, Dao, Sigma and Invisan, all in Capiz, are moderately to severely affected with widespread damage to trees, crops, houses and markets. Most houses seem to be damaged, mostly partial and most trees have fallen down (lots of bamboo). Commerce however seems less affected and most shops are open.

The urban centre of Roxas city has escaped most of the devastating impact of the typhoon as many buildings are made of concrete. The lack of electricity seems to be the main inconvenience at the moment. In the poorer urban areas away from the centre of town housesshow more signs of damage.

We drove from Roxas City to the most eastern point of Capiz and passed through the municipalities of Panay, Pontevedra, President Roxas and Pilar. All are moderately to severely affected and Pilar seems to be the hardest hit. We decided therefore to initially concentrate our efforts in Capiz on Pilar.

Pilar has 24 barangays (11 coastal). We met with the mayor and some of his staff (including PESO) and explained the purpose of our visit. Support is very welcome and we visited 3 barangays to scope a cash-for-work intervention. The coastal areas are the worst affected.

One of these, San Ramon for example, has 663 households of which 90% are affected.

After completing the proposed emergency project for Pilar we continued our assessment in Iloilo. We passed through the northern municipalities Balasan, Batad, San Dionisio, Sara, Concepcion and Ajuy. All are moderately affected with the same kind of damage as we saw in Capiz. The signs of impact disappear when one leaves Barotac Viejo (slightly affected) southwards to Iloilo. We decided to focus on one municipality to do a more in-depth assessment as we chose Concepcion as it is one of the poorer municipalities and the location where the typhoon made landfall.

In Concepcion we met with the mayor and several of his staff including the PESO manager. Concepcion has 25 barangays (14 on the mainland and 11 on the islands), more or less all affected (80-90%). About 9,000 people were affected and as with many other municipalities this was the first time to experience such a storm. We were initially directed towards communities where the impact was relatively modest. Our first visit was to Bantique where people seem to be relatively well off (rice producing areas) and the only damage was a fallen tree blocking the end of a road and some trees fallen in a school yard (the school itself was damaged as well). We decided that this was not an appropriate location to start emergency employment. During the following drive however we were able to spot communities that were more affected. In fact parts of the Poblacion were completed destroyed by a surge, something we didn’t see in Capiz. Cleaning and rebuilding these areas requires some more preparation and planning and wedecided to focus on a few coastal communities where people live in poverty and have lost (parts of) their livelihoods.

The last day we met with the regional Director of DSWD to brief her on the findings of the mission. This was very much welcomed. According to DSWD 7,900 families are affected in Pilar while 6,960 families are affected in Concepcion. She confirmed that shelter is the priority with 214,925 houses totally damaged and 216,406 houses partly damaged as of 21/11/2013. She also shared our view that materials and land ownership will be main issues. Relief goods distribution may continue until December.

Objective 2: Identification of Partners

DOLE Regional Office

We briefly discussed the objectives of the mission with the DOLE regional director Ponciano Higutom and some of his staff.

At the end of the mission we de-briefed the regional director together with the Iloilo country office. We discussed the trip, findings and the two proposals developed and both the regional director and the provincial director seemed to be content with what is proposed and are ready to collaborate. The regional director informed us that as of November 30 the minimum wage will be increased with 10 Peso to 287 Peso.

DOLE Provincial Office

We met with the DOLE provincial office in Roxas City. The director had invited the management of the Chamber of Commerce and the proposal was for us to help communities rebuild their damaged houses. This seems to be a sensible proposal as our field visits confirm that the reconstruction or repair of houses is the first priority for individual families. However it is more of an intermediate activity as a housing sub-project would have a number of complexities such as the land ownership and the private asset issue and the material component. DOLE provincial level is interested to cooperate with us and the director accompanied us during the field visit to eastern Capiz.

We met with the Iloilo regional office together with the regional director. As indicated above, the provincial office seems eager to collaborate on the initiatives.

LGUs

Pilar municipality in Capiz has expressed interest and support to work with us.

Concepcion municipality in Iloilo has equally expressed interest and support to work with us. Both municipalities are among the hardest hit in the two provinces. We briefed and de-briefed both mayors who seem to be fully occupied and on top of the relief efforts. Both welcome ILO assistance.

PESO

The PESO manager in Pilar joined us on our field visit to selected barangays and seems eager to cooperate. This is important as PESO will have to monitor works and pay workers based on the muster roll.

We met with 2 of the 3 barangay captains in Binaowan, San Ramon and Casanayan in Pilar and discussed the cleaning and clearing activities. Both gentlemen expressed keen interest to work with us on the suggested emergency employment scheme. The principles and procedures of the emergency employment project were well explained to them.

In Concepcion, Iloilo, we had discussions with residents of three sitios of Lo-ong barangay, mostly fisherfolk, and met with the barangay captain. Emergency employment activities are welcome in all three areas and we prepared a scheme to cover the three sitios. Both the mayor and the PESO officer suggested to also include Tanbag barangay along the coast. Tanbag is not accessible by road and the municipality’s motor boat was used to distribute relief goods. As the sea was quite rough we decided not to try to hire a local boat and did not visit Tanbag. We did however include the barangay in the proposed emergency employment project as the situation is most likely similar as in Lo-ong. The PESO manager would try to travel to Tanbag and send us an update.

An issue we thought of and which was confirmed by the DSWD director is the change of barangay captains on December 1 (if not re-elected). We confirmed that in all our selected barangays the captain was re-elected to minimize being side-lined by local politics.

Objective 3: Identification of Emergency Employment Activity

Priority in Capiz is shelter. The need has shifted from food to shelter. Food supply and water are fine. Lost of cleaning and clearing has been done already and almost all roads are passable again. The need for debris removal seems to be the biggest in the more remote communities where areas need to be cleared in order for people to rebuild or repair their house and continue with their lives.

For Pilar we suggest an emergency employment scheme for just below 1 million Peso including the three barangays visited. About 50 workers (including 3 foremen and nurse) will be engaged for a period of 15 days, at minimum wage for unskilled workers, to clear roads and remove debris from residential areas. The groups will be divided in teams to work in different locations of the elected barangays. Our engineer (Ritchel) and community specialist (Jen) will support during start up and monitor activities and provide technical support and general guidance. We prepared a proposal for approval by ILO Manila and RDOLE in Iloilo.

Needs and priorities in Iloilo are similar except that parts of Iloilo seem to have been hit by a storm search which causes a different kind of destruction and response. WE suggest a similar scheme for Concepcion, basically to start emergency employment activities in 4 communities spread out over two barangays. We can then build on these activities and possibly expand as we go and funds are becoming available. A proposal for emergency employment for just under a million peso was prepared for Concepcion.

Objective 4: Security and Office

There is no security threat on Panay. A few mountainous districts still have NPA but overall the island is peaceful.

It shouldn’t be difficult to find office space in Roxas City.