Disaster Survivors Conference launched

By People Surge Philippines
November 4, 2017

PALO, Leyte – People Surge Philippines joined the National Anti-Poverty Commission and the Leyte Center for Development and Empowerment in holding a region-wide Disaster Survivors Conference that gathered farmers and urban poor in the Oriental Hotel earlier today.

The Conference sought to gather updated information on the local situation of disaster survivors four years after the onslaught of super typhoon Yolanda in an effort to produce a region-wide Situationer on areas concerning poverty, food security and human rights in the region as an output.

A series of workshops and input discussions were held to consolidate data from provinces affected not just by Yolanda but also through succeeding calamities and government policies implemented post 2013 to the present, particularly the conference proponents intended to get an overview on government response to the decrease in the agriculture sector’s contribution to the regional gross domestic product on top of an increasing poverty incidence rate in Eastern Visayas alongside red flags from different human right groups in all the provinces of the region.

Participants shared heart-wrenching stories of prevailing hardships borne by victims of calamities in the country sides who up to this day, do not feel any other form of government presence aside from consistent military operations being conducted in their own communities and even zones of peace like public schools in some provinces.