Yolanda victims to be awarded more housing units

President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. said Wednesday that the government is working on giving more housing units and titles to people in Tacloban City where Super Typhoon Yolanda hit.

During the 10th Year Yolanda Commemoration in Tacloban, Marcos said that the government had asked the Department of Human Settlements and Human Development and the National Housing Authority to speed up giving the recipients housing units and land titles.

Marcos mentioned that the government is still working on making evacuation and emergency operations centers more resistant to disasters.

He added that the government is also setting up centralized and effective early warning systems and disaster reaction plans to try to stop similar tragedies from happening again.

"The government is always striving to ensure that such tragedies of this magnitude will be avoided and will be adapted to," Marcos said.

During the same event, Marcos gave out certificates of award to several beneficiaries of the NHA's Yolanda Permanent Housing Sites.

Marcos thanked the groups, workers, and governments that helped Tacloban City get back on its feet after Yolanda.

"Who could ever forget the extraordinary outpouring of love and help and compassion that came from all over the country and all over the world? The volunteerism, the heroism, that overflowed in the affected areas, specifically in the rehabilitation of Tacloban," Marcos said.

"Indeed, what we saw back then was the spirit of Bayanihan in its truest form," he added.

Marcos also asked for prayers for the residents killed by Yolanda. However, he questioned the casualties a decade after the disaster as he believed that there were those casualties who were not included in the official toll.

Government figures showed that Super Typhoon Yolanda killed at least 6,000 people.

"We must always keep a special place in our hearts for those who we lost who are uncounted, unrecorded … we say 6,000 casualties, (but) we do not know that for sure (and) we are certain that there were more," said Marcos.

"Even if that's the case, let them not be unremembered, so when we grieve and when we mourn for our dead, keep a special place in your heart for those who have not been known to have gone, but we know the loss that we feel," he added.

Super Typhoon Yolanda hit several Visayas provinces like Leyte, Eastern Samar, Western Samar, Capiz, Cebu, Iloilo, Aklan, and Palawan in November 2013. However, Tacloban City was affected the most.

National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council reported 14,433 displaced families in Tacloban, largely from coastal areas, who sought sanctuary in the convention center, one of the few facilities that survived Yolanda.

A marker was unveiled at the convention center in 2015, where at least 8,000 evacuees survived the deadly storm surge.

A 2015 report by the Department of Budget and Management showed that government-to-government transactions provided at least P73 billion in aid. The Philippines received aid from the US and China.