Dinky’s heart with ‘Comvalenyos’—gov, solon

This is in reaction to the editorial “Hunger” (Inquirer, 3/2/13) which stated that “The raid (last Feb. 26) on the regional office of the Department of Social Welfare and Development in Davao City would not have happened had national and local officials been sensitive to the situation of the survivors of Typhoon ‘Pablo’ from Compostela Valley and Davao Oriental.”

Given the seriousness of this contention, the editorial should have looked into all angles. We know the Inquirer is widely read and generally trusted. In the interest of fairness, here’s our side of the story.

The provincial government of Compostela Valley has been working round the clock to hasten the disaster relief efforts, even the daunting task of rehabilitation. Our record proves that no one has been left behind in the distribution of  relief goods since day one when the typhoon struck Compostela Valley province in December. We have been distributing relief goods to every affected family in every  purok  and barangay in the province with the help of the Department of Social Welfare and Development and the United Nations World Food Program.

As a usual practice, we cannot just hand out slapdash the relief goods. It must be organized so that it can be equitable. We require a recipient list to weed out opportunists and to be able to distribute the goods to the real beneficiaries. The same reason why the DSWD would not give the 10,000 sacks of rice sans a list of legitimate beneficiaries.

We can always safely assume that all those supposedly hungry people who went to the DSWD regional office, if they were indeed Comvalenyos, must have been receiving relief goods from the provincial government and the DSWD, otherwise they would have died of starvation. If they were hungry and financially hard up, why did they have the capacity to go to Davao City from Compostela Valley, riding in a luxury bus when they had no money to buy food?

We know that some militant leaders were backing up Barug Katawhan, and we know how these leftists tried to provoke anger to get media mileage. One of their tactics was to use people. They deceived these people by promising them that if they would come, they could get and bring home (each of them) one sack of rice. They even prodded people into unlawful acts by raiding the bodega of the DSWD, stealing sacks of rice and other goods supposedly for Typhoon “Crising” victims of the neighboring cities and provinces.

We are one with Social Welfare Secretary Dinky Soliman in our efforts to rebuild our province. In fact, we personally felt the concern of the secretary for our people. A day after the typhoon, she was in our province. We can vouch for her commitment to and sincerity in helping Compostela Valley. It would be unfair if people would get a negative perception of her from that incident just because of the editorial.

—ARTURO T. UY, provincial governor; MARIA CARMEN S. ZAMORA, representative, District 1,

Compostela Valley