TF Bangon Marawi confident of hitting goals by end-2021

TASK Force Bangon Marawi (TFBM) is confident that the yearend target for completing the rehabilitation of Marawi City is within reach this year.

In a statement, TFBM Chairman and Department of Human Settlements and Urban Development (DHSUD) Eduardo D. del Rosario said the rehabilitation is now 40-percent complete.

If 10 percent of the rehabilitation and reconstruction works is completed every month, Del Rosario said the year-end deadline will be met.

“Based on my recent visit in the last two days, we are now 40 percent (complete) in the vertical and horizontal infrastructure. That’s why I told them that if we will be completing 10 percent per month, we are within our timeline of completing the rehabilitation by December 2021,” the TFBM chief emphasized. “Based on our master development plan, we are on track with the target that we have set.”

Del Rosario said the government, through the TFBM, began rehabilitation efforts by providing emergency assistance like financial, livelihood, food, medicine and shelter.

This first phase took the TFBM 10 months to complete citing difficulties from the impact of the 5-month firefight.

The efforts transitioned to the second phase, which focused on debris management that sought to remove tons of debris as well as recovering and detonating unexploded bombs.

Removing the debris and explosives in Marawi after the armed conflict that gripped the city took about one year and four months, the TFBM has said.

This phase was followed by the construction of vertical and horizontal infrastructure, which went on full blast in July last year amid the Covid-19 pandemic.

“In any calamity-stricken area, the first phase of rehabilitation is to provide immediate emergency assistance—early intervention activities, which takes about six months to one year,” Secretary Del Rosario said.

The DHSUD said the armed conflict caused severe economic losses to the Maranaos, but governmentled interventions have since helped Marawi citizens get back on their feet.

Earlier, the government turned over permanent shelters to 109 internally displaced persons (IDPS) families from various Marawi villages that were severely affected.

They were the first batch of Marawi IDPS awarded with permanent shelters, over 3,000 of which are currently in various stages of construction across the city.

The permanent housing units were constructed by Un-habitat with a $10-million grant from the Japanese government on a 1.8-hectare land provided and developed by the Social Housing Finance Corp.

“Shelter is a right of every Filipino family, and because of that, [the administration] created the DHSUD,” Del Rosario has said in one of his visits to Marawi.

The TFBM is composed of 56 implementing agencies as well as partner-organizations. The task force has six subcommittees: reconstruction, housing, peace and order, health and social welfare, business and livelihood, and land resource management.

The head of the TFBM subcommittee on reconstruction is the Department of Public Works and Highways; housing, DHSUD; and peace and order, Department of the Interior and the Department of National Defense.

The subcommittee on health social welfare is led by the Department of Health and the Department of Social Welfare and Development; business and livelihood, Department of Trade and Industry; land resource management, Department of Environment and Natural Resources.