By Perla G. Lena
TACLOBAN CITY, Feb. 12 (PNA) — The national government through the Presidential Assistant on Rehabilitation and Recovery (PARR) eyes the implementation of at least 80 percent of the projects listed in the deliverables of the master rehabilitation and recovery plan (MRRP) on or before June 2016.
This was revealed by newly-appointed rehabilitation and recovery regional coordinator for Eastern Visayas Robert R. Castañares before members of the Regional Disaster Risk Reduction Management Council (RDRRMC) here.
The implementation is one of the three minimum requirements that they hope to achieve based on the MRRP.
Castañares said that rehab czar, Secretary Panfilo Lacson, would like to see the list of deliverables by end of February even as he urged the cooperation of agencies like the Office of the Civil Defense (OCD), National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA) and Department of Agriculture (DA), among others.
Through the MRRP, the target is also to restore to pre-Yolanda level the quality of life and household income.
The restoration of the quality of life means that infrastructure, access to water and other utilities and all other basic services should be made at the very least before the pre-Yolanda level.
In terms of income, he stated that before Yolanda, household income was around P5,000 to P6,000 a month which was even difficult for a family of five to survive.
“That will be the criteria that we are using in preparing this master rehab plan,” he said.
As strategy, he added that there has to be determination and separation of needs from wants as he observed that during the initial planning there was a combination of several projects; “some are quite ambitious and some can be considered as basic need.”
He said that the needs shall be labeled as immediate or short term and the wants as medium to long-term projects.
The list of deliverables is expected to be announced by Secretary Lacson towards end of March based on key result areas to include the social, economic, infrastructure and environment, he added.
He also urged the cooperation of concerned sectors to help PARR “identify major issues, bottlenecks and possible problems” as he underscored the role of the office is to address them before the start of the implementation. (PNA)