Guinsaugon survivors appeal for investors in St. Bernard town

By Ronron
February 15, 2008

Two years after the tragic landslide in St. Bernard town in Southern Leyte that covered the entire Barangay Guinsaugon, survivors are seeking for the local government to draw in investors so they will have a regular source of living as they occupy their temporary new houses.

Nancy Cajes, 34, told Manila Shimbun in a phone interview Friday that she had to leave the housing unit she got from Gawad Kalinga (GK) at the New Guinsaugon Village (NGV) for Manila because the income of her husband is not sufficient to sustain their living.

“I had nothing to do there (in St. Bernard) while I was there. And my husband’s income here in Manila where he works as a welder is not enough for us because we are also supporting some close relatives,” Cajes said in mixed Cebuano and Tagalog dialects.

Employed as a nanny to a five-year-old boy in Fairview, Quezon City since May 2007, Cajes said she and her husband now have P5,000 more in their income compared to when she remained at the NGV in Barangay Magbagacay in St. Bernard.

NGV chairman Felix Coquilla said Cajes is just one of some residents in NGV who have left their housing units to the care of relatives to find greener pasture elsewhere, including Metro Manila.

Coquilla said that of the 330 housing units at NGV donated by GK, Philippine National Red Cross (PNRC), and the Japan International Coordinating Agency (JICA), about 20 percent have been left by original occupants to the care of their relatives.

He said they are either recipients who opted to work in Metro Manila or orphans who preferred to study in Butuan City, Cebu City or Maasin City.

The remaining residents, said Coquilla, resort to construction jobs, farming, and running small variety stores to sustain their living in town.

“A regular source of income is really the problem here. I hope there will be interested investors here who will put up a company or factory that will provide a permanent job to our people here,” Coquilla said.

Cajes shared Coquilla’s thoughts. “Even I might consider going home if I will get a permanent job there,” she said.

Coquilla boasted of the town’s abaca production that must be exploited by investors for export or domestic consumption.

He said he believes the survivors of the Guinsaugon tragedy on February 17, 2006 have already recovered from the incident, and are ready to take permanent jobs if available.

Coquilla admitted that for a while, when donors supplied his fellow survivors with regular food rations, some residents became lazy in helping their selves.

He said he would even see some residents just drink the afternoon away with liquor, although when asked, would claim they just want to forget the tragedy that still lingers in their minds.

“I understand them of course because they lost some family members. But I remind them that after getting intoxicated, does that mean they will have to drink again because they are reminded again of the tragedy?,” Coquilla said in Cebuano.

But when the rations stopped last year, Coquilla said the people realized that they have no choice but to help themselves.

“I don’t believe they are lazy by nature. I know that if there are job opportunities here, these people will really work,” said Coquilla.

Coquilla recounted that prior to the tragedy, the people of Guinsaugon did not have much difficulty like they are in now because of the vast farmland then. He said they had the ricefield, coconut plantation, and the abaca plantation that people get their income from.

On Sunday, during the second anniversary of the tragedy, a mass will be held near the landslide site at 9am.

Over a hundred persons were recovered dead while about a thousand others were buried alive and remain unearthed when mixed boulders and mud came down from Mt. Kan-Abag in Barangay Guinsaugon on February 17 two years ago due to continuous rains in the province./DMS