| 8 September 2010 |
| Church leader blames government for slow response to crisis |
MANILA (APEN) – Head of the Catholic bishops has said that the Philippines government was not prepared in responding to the typhoon Ondoy because of graft and corruption.
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“If there were no graft and corruption in our government, our government would be more prepared to respond to such crisis,” Jaro Archbishop Angel Lagdameo, president of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) said.
More than 250 people were reported to have died due to the typhoon Ondoy and subsequent floods that immediately occurred here and the nearby provinces after a couple of hours of continuous downpour on 26 September.
Thousands of people have been reported to have lost their properties and many of them rendered homeless.
According to the National Disaster Coordinating Council (NDCC) homes of nearly 1.9 million were inundated.
The president of the CBCP said on 30 September that the government was not prepared in responding to crisis.
Lagdameo expressed concern at the unacceptably slow response by the government to the grave humanitarian crisis.
He said that “depletion” of the government’s resources might have triggered the “slowness” in responding to the victims of the typhoon.
He is reported to have said that there was misappropriation of resources set aside for responding to calamities.
Bayani Fernando, the Metropolitan Manila Development Authority chief who is responsible for flood control in the capital, said that among the major factors in the flood were poor city planning, illegal structures and simple geography.
“We pray against typhoons, earthquakes, floods and other natural calamities. But when they do occur, the heroism of the Filipino comes out,” Archbishop Lagdameo has said.
“We are humbled by the crises that come to us. We pray to God and appeal for our neighbor,” he added.
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