By Leilani S. Junio
MANILA, (PNA) — The Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) said Thursday that it spends an average of P3 million worth of food for the evacuees inside the Joaquin F. Enriquez Sports Complex or Grandstand on a daily basis.
According to DSWD Secretary Corazon J. Soliman, since the start of the armed-conflict in Zamboanga City, a total of P30.97 million worth of food and non-food items were provided by the agency.
To date, there are a total of 23,794 families with 118,819 individuals or 54 percent of the total population of Zamboanga City were listed to be affected by the 11-day conflict.
Secretary Soliman said there are now a total of 57 evacuations centers that are spread in the city feeding and assisting a total of 21,261 families equivalent to 112,961 individuals.
The evacuees in the JFE sports complex or grandstand has still the largest number of evacuees sheltering about 63 percent of the total number of families inside the evacuation centers.
The DSWD chief also added that she instructed social workers to conduct computerized profiling of displaced families using the DSWD Disaster Assistance Family Access Card for validation and profile generation.
“That will be a basis for the provision of relief and further assistance including shelter assistance for families whose houses were damaged due to fires,” Soliman said.
She said that at present about 118 rescued hostages already went through under DSWD’s stress debriefing sessions and had gone home.
Soliman also said that DSWD’s social workers continue to provide stress debriefing sessions to other hostages, especially the children who were traumatized by the armed-conflict.
She also added the Psycho-Social Processing Sessions and Critical Incident Stress Debriefing in the tents put-up by the DSWD and the Department of Health (DOH) already served about 166 clients.
Aside from these, she added that financial assistance and burial assistance were also given to those who were unfortunately hurt and died during the crossfire between the government forces and the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF).
She reiterated that DSWD is exerting all its efforts to ensure that there is continuous provision of food every meal time to the volume of evacuees especially the elders, lactating mothers and children.
The DSWD also has partnered with local food service providers that provides about 70,000 ready-to-eat packed foods for the evacuees three times a day.
Likewise, Soliman said community kitchen from the City Social Welfare Development Office (CSWDO) is also providing about 12,000 ready to eat foods three times a day while the Philippine Red Cross (PRC) and International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) with the help of local volunteers also cooks dinner for 10,000 individuals.
Community kitchen of the DSWD field office 9 inside the Grandstand are also providing food augmentation since the start of the on-going conflict.
Other evacuation centers are otherwise handled and managed by social workers of DSWD, CSWDO and other civil society organizations (CSOs) to ensure enough provision of foods are undertaken.
Soliman said that continuous provision of food is also given to some 613 badjao families who still preferred to stay in their vintas in front of the grandstand.
PRC/ICRC has also help in setting up water bladders inside the grandstand and near the Badjao families to keep the evacuees supplied with enough water.
Four medical stations inside the grandstand consisting of DOH, Zamboanga City Health Department, Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office (PCSO), PRC/ICRC are deployed to provide medical assistance and medicines to the evacuees as part of the effort to monitor the health conditions of evacuees and ensure that those who get sick are given immediate medications.
She said several food and non-food assistance were earlier provided by DSWD Field Offices in Region 9, 10 and CARAGA and other private sectors such as United States Agency for International Development (USAID), United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), International Organization of Migration (IOM) as added support to the evacuees.