In response to several media reports that there were relief goods buried in Dagami, Leyte, Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) Secretary Corazon Juliano-Soliman explained that these goods were unfit for human consumption.

“Disaster survivors have the right to receive safe relief goods. It is our duty to protect survivors of disasters from further harm that is why we decided to dispose of these goods immediately.  We wanted to make sure that these goods that were unfit for human consumption would not be given to the survivors,” Sec. Soliman stressed.

Sec. Soliman added that there are DSWD personnel who have been remiss in their duties and did not perform their jobs to ensure that the goods remain to be safe.

“I have ordered a thorough investigation of the incident to find out who are liable and to file appropriate administrative charges against them, in accordance with civil service rules,” she said.

At the same time, Sec. Soliman shared that the Department had already acknowledged the gap in the Department’s capacity to manage relief goods and she stressed that several improvements are already being done.

“This is why we continue to enhance our warehousing capacity,” she said.

She cited the new mechanized repacking system at the National Resource Operations Center (NROC) that the Department recently acquired in partnership with the World Food Programme and with funding support from the United Kingdom’s Department for International Development (DFID). The system enhances the capacity of the Department to repack 50,000 family food packs per day.

Furthermore, there will be a groundbreaking ceremony tomorrow, December 3, for a new warehouse at the NROC in partnership with the Australian Government. The new warehouse will increase storage capacity from 200,000 to 270,000 packaged and unpackaged family food packs, and will provide safe storage for additional vital non-food items such as blankets, cooking implements, and mosquito nets, among others.

The Department will also construct regional island warehouses in Clark for Luzon and in Cebu for Visayas for easier accessibility and response during disasters. For Mindanao island, the Davao warehouse is already operational. To complement these, regional warehouses in all DSWD-Field Offices will also be constructed in partnership with the Australian Government.

“These efforts to improve NROC and those warehouses at the field office level will respond to the need for a more efficient way of managing relief goods,” Sec. Soliman concluded. ###