GUIHULNGAN CITY, Negros Oriental—The parish priest of a Negros Oriental town ravaged by earthquake and landslides has deplored politicking in the distribution of assistance to victims.
Fr. Felipe Luis Ferolina of the San Sebastian parish in La Libertad town also lambasted those who took advantage of the disaster for personal gain.
He cited business owners who significantly increased the prices of their products after the calamity stuck.
“This is an emergency. Instead of taking advantage, we must be united in helping and sharing what we have,” Ferolina told the Inquirer.
La Libertad, along with Guihulngan City, was the worst hit in the 6.9-magnitude earthquake and landslides that struck Central Visayas on February 6.
The death toll in the disaster was 41 as of 2 p.m. Sunday. Fifty-six residents remained missing—18 in Barangay (village) Planas in Guihulngan and 38 in Barangay Solonggon in La Libertad.
Ferolina said “politics came into play” in the distribution of food packs citing those with stickers with the name of politicians. The practice came to the priest’s attention from accounts of evacuees and other victims. But he clarified that the stickers were not of officials of La Libertad.
Negros Oriental Governor Roel Degamo has come under fire after food packs distributed to victims had stickers that read: “DSWD Magdegamo Rescue.” Degamo has explained that the markings in the food packs were meant to inform the public that the provincial government was doing its job.
Delays
Some victims in Guihulngan City complained of the delay in the delivery of food assistance and the concentration of distribution of the goods in the house of Mayor Ernesto Reyes in the city proper.
One victim of a village spoke to the Inquirer on condition of anonymity that relief assistance arrived in their barangay Friday evening or four days after the earthquake struck.
“We learned that the relief goods were already at the mayor’s house but it didn’t reach us until Friday,” the victim said.
Reyes denied that he was controlling the distribution of relief assistance.
“Anyone or any group can distribute their assistance to the victims. You can confirm that with media organizations and other donor groups,” Reyes told the Inquirer. He said the assistance was channeled to barangay officials and since Thursday, these have also been given directly to the victims. “There are some people who are spreading wrong information including those that I have received cash when in fact these were bottled water and rice. They just want to ruin me,” Reyes said. He, however, declined to identify them.
The Bagong Alyansang Makabayan (Bayan) urged local officials not to politicize the distribution of relief goods after receiving complaints from residents about the delay.
“Spare the victims of the earthquake from politics, prioritize the people,” said Christian Tuayon, secretary general of Bayan in Negros. He called on government agencies and the private sector to deliver the aid directly to the people so relief goods wouldn’t go through politicians.
Landslide
On Saturday night, around 200 evacuees in Barangay Tinayunan Beach in Guihulngan were again evacuated in military trucks after the Mines and Geosciences Bureau (MGB) issued a landslide alert in the village.
MGB team leader Abraham Lucero Jr., said in a letter to Tinayunan Beach village chief Monica Aranas that the landslide susceptibility rating in the area was “high.”
9:42 pm | Sunday, February 12th, 2012
http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/144389/%E2%80%98politicking%E2%80%99-in-relief-distribution-slammed
Sunday, 12 February 2012
Reaching Out To Save Lives - Haredi Rescue Group Builds Interfaith Cooperation
ZICHRON YAAKOV, ISRAEL — The image of Israel’s Haredim has taken a public battering over the past few months, particularly over the issue of discriminatory conduct toward women, which even a few Haredi groups have disavowed. But in an unusual act of outreach, some of these ultra-Orthodox Jews have recently found an original way of engaging with people outside their own closed religious world: cooperating to save lives.
Leaders of ZAKA, an Israeli medical and rescue organization best known for its work in the aftermath of suicide bombings, has launched a program that seeks to work with Muslim and Christian counterparts on emergency rescues.
In January, ZAKA announced its own interfaith platform. It came just as tensions between religious and secular society were boiling over the issue of gender segregation. At the tensions’ peak, some Haredim rioted in the town of Beit Shemesh, even donning death camp outfits to dramatize their own sense of victimhood. Against this backdrop, ZAKA has assembled two dozen of Israel’s most respected religious leaders — from Chief Rabbi Yona Metzger to Muafak Tarif, head of Israel’s Druze community, and Mohamad Kiwan, who leads an association of imams in Israel — to sign a declaration committing themselves to a shared humanitarian vision.
The the declaration, signed on January 4 in Zichron Yaakov, reasons that because man is created in God’s image, people of all religions are obliged to “respect each and every person as he is, and to educate and transmit values and messages of peace.” On a practical level, this means that ZAKA will increase minority involvement — with outreach programs like a first aid course for Arab women — and increase the number of volunteers from Israel’s non-Jewish communities.
ZAKA’s chairman, Yehuda Meshi-Zahav, who himself was once a leader in the anti-Zionist fringes of the Haredi world, told the Forward that this new initiative represents a more sustainable form of interfaith relations than dialogue. “Every dialogue without actual action doesn’t have a future,” he said. Greek Melkite priest Touma Haddad, a signatory to the declaration, commented, “Sometimes talking is just not enough.”
Looking a little out of place in his Haredi clothes and side curls, Meshi-Zahav has spent the weeks since the declaration touring Arab villages, asking sheiks to support it by encouraging their followers to become ZAKA volunteers. Though the effect has not yet led to an increase in participation, he expects that it will do so over the next few months.
ZAKA already has 350 volunteers from Israel’s minority religions, who serve alongside the organization’s 1,150 Haredi volunteers and 350 non-Haredi Jews. When many of them gathered for the January interfaith declaration, the warm embraces and intimate conversations among them were testament to strong friendships formed over shared — and sometimes harrowing — experiences. Haredim chaired the proceedings, the Christians who provided the hall for the evening did the (strictly kosher) catering and a Muslim volunteer took photographs. “It’s the same God and the same values that make us volunteer together,” said Salach Badir, a volunteer from the Arab city of Kfar Kassem, which is located near Tel Aviv.
ZAKA was established in 1995 by Meshi-Zahav, who until a few years prior was known as the public face of the Eida Haredit, one of the most hard-line and extremist Haredi groups. He established ZAKA (the Hebrew acronym for Disaster Victim Identification) primarily to pick up body parts that were strewn about at the scene of terrorist attacks. ZAKA’s yellow-jacketed volunteers became a common sight on news reports from Israeli bomb scenes.
ZAKA expanded to provide medical and search-and-rescue services, and established an international unit that has helped after disasters occurred in Haiti, Japan and elsewhere. Its domestic operation relies on volunteers who, tapping into networks for Israel’s state emergency services, can often be first on the scene.
Since setting up ZAKA, Meshi-Zahav’s ideology has mellowed — to the extent that he is now a vocal critic of the extremist camp to which he once belonged. “I believe that as long as we in the Haredi community do not stand up and reject the actions of those extremists who are now tarring the reputation of the wider ultra-Orthodox community, we condone their unacceptable behavior with our silence,” he told the Forward in relation to the recent violence. On his Facebook page he has even likened Haredi extremists to “terrorists.”
As ZAKA expanded, its volunteer base grew beyond the Haredi community. It attracted Jews of all religious stripes, as well as people of every other religion. Volunteering became especially popular in outlying Bedouin villages. With ZAKA training, individuals can provide quick responses for their community and for others nearby, while state emergency services can take some time to arrive. In one of ZAKA’s newest programs, Haredi and Muslim volunteers have started running a course in accident prevention and first aid for women in Arab towns.
With its new declaration, ZAKA resolves to capitalize on the interfaith aspect of its work and “have ZAKA volunteers as opinion formers within their communities, working to encourage co-existence, helping and assisting others and instilling values of peace and co-existence.”
The declaration acknowledges that the imperative of various religions to “honor the living and the dead” has attracted many of ZAKA’s volunteers and should be capitalized on to increase ZAKA’s membership and further promote this interfaith ideal. It says that “with more and more volunteers working together, the barriers will come down, people’s outlook on life changes, and we become more united, focused and better people, bringing closer the prospect of peace.”
Badir said that barriers have already come down in his community — the first to run the women’s course, which he facilitated. Badir said that when he first volunteered with Haredim, “some people thought it was strange, but now it’s totally accepted.”
12 February 2012
Read more: http://www.forward.com/articles/151040/#ixzz1mCdytvmr
Remains of another 9/11 victim identified
Remains of another 9/11 victim have been identified.
The New York City Chief Medical Examiner's Office announced Friday that it had identified remains of Karol Ann Keasler.
She was 42 when she died in the terrorist attack a decade ago. She worked in the World Trade Center at investment bank Keefe, Bruyette & Woods Inc.
The new identification was made when officials retested remains gathered during the initial recovery efforts.
More than 2,750 people were reported missing in the attack on the twin towers. The newest identification brings the number of victims to have some portion of their remains identified to 1,633.
Another 1,120 never had any remains recovered.
February 10, 2012
Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/remains_of_another_victim_identified_m8MxMu1JaBElCI5Qx0DiDJ#ixzz1mCd77Oge
The New York City Chief Medical Examiner's Office announced Friday that it had identified remains of Karol Ann Keasler.
She was 42 when she died in the terrorist attack a decade ago. She worked in the World Trade Center at investment bank Keefe, Bruyette & Woods Inc.
The new identification was made when officials retested remains gathered during the initial recovery efforts.
More than 2,750 people were reported missing in the attack on the twin towers. The newest identification brings the number of victims to have some portion of their remains identified to 1,633.
Another 1,120 never had any remains recovered.
February 10, 2012
Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/remains_of_another_victim_identified_m8MxMu1JaBElCI5Qx0DiDJ#ixzz1mCd77Oge