Traders seek help vs ‘looters’

BUSINESSMEN from Leyte yesterday appealed to the national government to stop the widespread looting of stores and business establishments.

Andrew Ng, secretary of Leyte Chamber of Commerce and Industry (LCCI), said looting incidents are worsening the situation in the area since it is scaring away businessmen from bringing supplies into the typhoon-hit area.

Ng said groups who plan to bring relief aid to Leyte back out since “there are no safe places to house them. We urge the government to be more proactive and immediately secure Region 8. We want to help but please give us security,” he told reporters yesterday in a press conference in Mandaue City.

Ng and his family flew to Cebu on board an air force C-130 aircraft to seek refuge in the province as residents in Tacloban City ransacked their stores and warehouses for food. Tacloban City locals who were desperate for food broke into shops that had withstood the typhoon by breaking glass windows and winching open steel gates, according to earlier reports. Even institutions distributing relief aid were not spared as a convoy of the Philippine Red Cross got waylaid and ransacked, said the report.

Mario Panganiban, a large-scale distributor of food supplies and various products in Leyte, said the government should send soldiers and policemen to Ormoc, Catbalogan and Calbayog in Samar province which are now being targeted by looters.

Organized crime

Panganiban claims that he lost around P400 million after armed men took away supplies in his three warehouses in Leyte. The “opportunists,” he said, disarmed the security guards of his warehouses and ransacked 40,000 cases of assorted goods and loaded them into a truck. “The ones that are looting are not entirely survivors, some are organized groups with the firearms and logistics to take advantage of the opportunity,” he said.