Friday 2 March 2012

DSWD-7 implements family access cards in quake sites

CEBU CITY, March 2 (PIA) -- The Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) will implement the use of the family access cards (FAC) in earthquake-stricken areas to ensure that no one is left unattended.

This is also to avoid duplication of goods and services received by the quake victims.

With this development, the DSWD will be able to identify and track who among the disaster victims have received and benefited from the relief supplies (food and non-food items) coming from both government and private sectors as well as the different services they have availed of, such as psychosocial intervention, medical, and shelter.

The cards contain detailed information on all the clients served inside and outside the evacuation centers (family composition, specific address, the number and kind of assistance received, signatures of the head of the family, service providers, social workers) as well as local officials (barangay captains and mayors).

So far, 61,027 victims have been served, amounting to more than P24 million.

A total of 3,526 houses have been recorded to be totally destroyed and 5,978 houses partially damaged.

There are now 39 evacuation centers left in the province of Negros Oriental with 8,723 displaced families who are currently and still temporarily taking refuge as aftershocks continue. (RMN-PIA-7/HFG/DSWD-7)

Thursday 1st of March 2012

http://www.pia.gov.ph/news/index.php?menu=&pdp=4&article=1091330597280

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Sep 11 victims' remains sent to landfill - Pentagon

The Pentagon revealed today that partial, incinerated remains of some Sept. 11 victims that could not be identified were sent to a landfill.

The number of victims involved was unclear according to a Pentagon report, but it involved some of those killed when a terrorist-hijacked airplane struck the Pentagon, killing 184, and another crashed in a field in Pennsylvania, killing 40, in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks against the U.S.

The Pentagon released the report by an independent committee that was asked to examine practices at the military's mortuary at Dover, Delaware, the first stopping point for fallen troops coming home from war overseas.

"We don't think it should have happened," the committee chairman, retired Gen. John Abizaid, told a Pentagon news conference.

The panel was formed after an investigation revealed last November that there was "gross mismanagement" at the Dover facility and body parts had been lost on two occasions. After that investigation, news reports said that some cremated partial remains of at least 274 American war dead were dumped in a Virginia landfill until a policy change halted the practice in 2008.

Tuesday's report was explaining the old policy, and said:

"This policy began shortly after Sept. 11, 2001, when several portions of remains from the Pentagon attack and the ... crash site could not be tested or identified."

It said the partial remains were cremated, then given to a biomedical waste disposal contractor who incinerated them and took them to a landfill.

Wednesday Feb 29, 2012

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10788762

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