20T food packs sent to Urduja-hit Biliran

The Department of Social Welfare and Development in Central Visayas has sent a total of 20,000 food packs to Biliran province in Eastern Visayas that was hit by fatal landslides triggered by tropical storm Urduja.

DSWD-7 Director Ma. Evelyn Macapobre said the agency shipped 15,600 food packs yesterday that were part of the 20,000 packs promised to be delivered as augmentation to the ongoing relief efforts in the typhoonstricken province.

Some 4,400 packs were already transported there last December 18.

“The standing policy for each DSWD regional office is to maintain stockpile of 30,000 food packs. They actually have their own but many individuals were affected by Urduja,” she said.

Macapobre said travel from Ormoc City in Leyte province to Biliran has been a challenge since the storm also affected roads.

“It was found to be more accessible if the goods will be transported from Cebu port to Biliran considering also the close distance between the two localities,” she said.

DSWD-7 can still give more food packs, according to Macapobre. However, this is dependent on the present capacity of its Visayas Disaster Response Center (VDRC) based in Mandaue City.

The huge center was opened since 2016 to speed up humanitarian assistance in times of natural disasters and other tragedies and to augment emergency response capacity in the country outside of Region 7.

Macapobre said the VDRC was, however, transferred to a different barangay so its mechanized production system was dismantled at the previous center and is still to be assembled at its new location in Barangay Tingub.

So for now, repacking of goods has been done manually with only 4,000 food packs produced a day, she added.

The mechanized production system can supposedly produce 50,000 family food packs in a day and can feed 250,000 people for three days.

Macapobre said the repacking is facilitated by beneficiaries of Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (4Ps). DSWD-7 is not yet scouting for volunteers since the system has not been fully mounted.

She said DSWD7 also released nearly 10,000 food packs from its regional warehouse in Barangay Labangon for local government units in northern Cebu that were also affected by Urduja, namely Daanbantayan, Medellin, Madridejos, and Pilar in Camotes Island.