The survivors of Typhoon Haiyan are in
desperate need of food and water and a huge relief effort is under way –
but a shocking claim has emerged from an aid worker in the Philippines
that government officials are prioritising aid based on who they think
will vote for them.
The worker told MailOnline
that the system there is so corrupt that he feared he would ‘vanish’ if he was identified.
He
said: ‘Relief is not being distributed fairly in the Philippines. The
government is prioritising the areas that vote for them. This is
happening with all the large aid. The government is holding funds back
and distributing on vote.’
However, a spokesman for the Disaster Emergency
Committee said: ‘The DEC has had no reports from our member agencies
that aid is being prioritised by the Philippines government on the basis
of potential political support.
‘The
DEC charities will fight tooth and nail to make sure aid goes to
survivors according to their need alone, without regard for irrelevant
factors such as people’s political views, religion or race.’
Shocking: An aid worker has claimed that the
Philippine government is distributing aid based on voting patterns.
Pictured is the devastated Leyte province
Horrifying: The worker explained that this issue
with distribution wasn't just happening on a national level – but at a
village level, too. Pictured is the ravaged city of Tacloban
The claim makes for horrifying
reading as pictures of survivors desperately pleading for food and
water are beamed around the world.
The worker explained that this issue with distribution wasn’t just happening on a national level – but at a village level, too.
He said: ‘It is being reported
to us by the locals in one village that the head of the Baranguays
[villages] gave additional vouchers for relief packs to families they
favoured. So by the end of the relief, even though we had given exactly
the right number of packs for the number of families in the village,
several went without.
‘They were all telling us that it was done by favouritism.’
The
worker was distressed that ‘only Leyte and Tacloban are getting the
international coverage’ and that the plight of those in other, more
remote, areas of the Philippines was being made worse because ‘no one
even knows about them’.
Desperate: The words 'SOS, Food, H20,
Help!!!' are painted on the roof of a house as seen from a Philippine
Air force helicopter in the super typhoon devastated Leyte Province
He added: ‘I don’t want to upset people over here it’s very corrupt and I don’t want to vanish.’
The Philippine government, meanwhile, has defended its efforts to deliver assistance to victims of the typhoon.
‘In
a situation like this, nothing is fast enough,’ Interior Secretary Mar
Roxas said in Tacloban, most of which was destroyed by the storm one
week ago.
‘The need is massive, the need is immediate, and you can't reach everyone.’
The
number of confirmed dead jumped more than 1,200 to 3,621, Eduardo del
Rosario, executive director of the National Disaster Risk Reduction and
Management Council said on Friday.
Help arrives: Philippine Army rescue teams clear the road to a hospital in Leyte
Neutralising: A Filipino officer dispenses mosquito poison at a damaged residential area in Tacloban
Survival measures: A man sells pigs in Tacloban city
Make-shift: Survivors carry metal sheets they've collected and head back to their destroyed village of Marabut
Some officials estimate that
the final toll, when the missing are declared dead and remote regions
reached, will be more than 10,000. At least 600,000 people have been
displaced.
The pace of the
aid effort has picked up over the last 24 hours, according to reporters
who have been in the region for several days. Foreign governments are
dispatching food, water, medical supplies and trained staff to the
region. Trucks and generators are also arriving.
But many people complain that the amount of food being given out is too small.
Renee Patron, 33, an American citizen of
Filipino descent who was in Guiuan city on eastern Samar province when
the typhoon struck, told the Associated Press news agency: 'The government's distribution system is not enough.
'They
are handing out small food packets to each household. But when you have
three families inside one home, one little packet is not enough.'
Her
friend, Susan Tan, whose grocery store and warehouse were completely
looted after the typhoon, is despondent but determined to carry on with
her life and help others.
A Landrover is loaded into the hold of a Royal
Air Force C17 at RAF Brize Norton preparing to carry UK Aid for victims
of the Phillipines typhoon. The load included 4x4s, earth moving
equipment, forklifts and medical supplies
Britain steps in: Justine Greening, Secretary of
State for International Development, is shown the vehicles and
humanitarian aid on the Philippines-bound aircraft
On its way: The C-17 aircraft, operated by No 99 Squadron, takes off
She's
now using her empty warehouse as a center from where people can make
calls on a satellite phone she got from a friend who works for local
telecoms company Smart. There has been no cell phone service in the town
since last Friday.
'This
was my store. Now's it's a relief center and a call center,' said Tan,
43. 'It was ransacked by panicked... people desperate for food. There
was no way to control them. We had stocked up on food for the Christmas
holidays. They took everything, and not just the food. They ransacked my
office too, anything they could find. They took away our furniture.'
Now,
the barren blue shelves are empty. Still, it is serving a purpose, with
about 100 people queued up outside waiting to make calls. The free
calls are limited to one minute each.
Defense
Secretary Voltaire Gazmin told The Associated Press that armed forces
have set up communications lines and C-130 transport planes are
conducting regular flights to Tacloban, the capital of Leyte.
While
the navies of the United States and its allies rushed to the aid of the
typhoon-hit Philippines, a state-of-the-art Chinese hospital ship has
stayed at home and in doing so has become a symbol of China's tepid
response to the crisis.
Generous: America and its allies have rushed to
the aid of the Philippines. Here American military personnel load relief
aid on to a US Navy Seabee helicopter from the USS George Washington
carrier at a landing zone in Tacloban
Exhaustion: US military personnel sleep on aid shipments at Tacloban Airport
Misery: People wait for flights out of Tacloban Airport in the early hours of Friday morning
Beauty amongst the despair: A rainbow forms over the airport in Tacloban
Escape: Survivors wait for a military plane that will carry them to Manila at Tacloban airport
A soldier assists young survivors to the military plane at Tacloban airport
The decision not to deploy
the 14,000-tonne Peace Ark, one of the newest and biggest hospital ships
in the world, is one that contrasts with a recent charm offensive
across Southeast Asia by China as it seeks to bolster ties and ease
tension over the disputed South China Sea.
Even
China's usually hawkish Global Times, a tabloid owned by the People's
Daily state mouthpiece, on Friday called for the Ark to sail to the
Philippines, where an international naval flotilla, headed by a U.S.
aircraft carrier strike group, is delivering food, water and medicine.
Initially,
China pledged $100,000 in aid to the Philippines after Typhoon Haiyan
roared across central islands a week ago, and a further $100,000 through
the Chinese Red Cross - figures dwarfed by multi-million dollar
donations from countries and corporations around the world.
Even
Swedish furniture chain Ikea and beverage giant Coca-Cola have done
more than the world's second-largest economy for the Philippines.
Posts
0 comments:
Post a Comment