There’s no more time to lose in liberating 21 container vans of donations from Belgian citizens intended for typhoon Yolanda victims.
After arriving in the Port of Cebu port sometime in January, the cargo sits in the pier useless to the people who need them the most.
After the blunder of consigning the shipments to Rotary International, which has no accreditation by the Philippine government as a relief agency or charity to receive tax-free donations, well-meaning donors in that side of Europe would think twice about being so generous again.
They didn’t want to deal with the government in the first place, which is why they addressed the goods to the Rotary in Cebu City.
That reluctance is proof itself of the lowly trust placed by private citizens of Belgium in the Philippine bureaucracy. That mindset isn’t limited to this small wealthy kingdom. Even overseas Filipinos in other countries hold back and prefer to send their donations home through private commercial couriers.
So imagine what they think of the Philippine government right now.
It’s water under the bridge to say the senders didn’t abide by donation rules in the Tarriff and Customs Code and Department of Finance.
We can’t simply “return to sender” the container vans that are racking up daily costs of demurrage for staying behind the time allowed for unloading the cargo in the Cebu International Port.
Quiet negotations were going on for months to break the impasse only to have Cebu businessman Philip Tan, district secretary of Rotary International District 3860, throw up his hands in March and name someone else, a Belgian living in Manila, to find a solution.
With so much time lost, no one wants to settle the bill anymore.
A pity, because the contents of the vans may include perishable items like food.
A simple solution would be for the Bureau of Customs to declare the entire cargo “abandoned”.
Then the vans would be forfeited in favor of the government, and the DSWD would have to take charge of distributing the goods to storm victims in Ormoc and Tacloban City — which was the whole point in the first place.
Ideally, the distribution was to be done by private volunteers, which can still be done by special arrangement with the agency. Shipping costs to Leyte could be covered by the Navy.
Cebu Deputy Collector Paul Alcazaren said his office was reluctant to jump in and declare the 21 vans “abandoned”, opting to give the Belgian donors more time to fix the papers.
But that’s an unacceptable waste of more time during a calamity, in this case, seven months after the “Haiyan” disaster.
As long as relief goods reach the people who need them most in a timely and transparent manner, no one has to assign blame or continue to gripe about red tape.
And while we’re trying to get the Belgian donations released, how many other container vans of humanitarian relief aid have gotten stuck in the Port of Cebu?
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