They stayed for only a few days but last week’s “forced occupation” by Sambang I fire victims of several classrooms of the City Central School should remind City Hall that it still has a lot more to do than reblocking fire sites or paying affected families to go back to their home provinces.
“Walay blackboard, walay haligi. Kinsay makatarong og tuon ana? (No blackboard. No walls. Who could study well here?)” said Jennifer Cabanhit, mother of a Grade 2 pupil in Cebu City Central School, on seeing her daughter inside a tent that served as a makeshift classroom at the school’s quadrangle.
No one can blame parents of the Cebu City Central School pupils for being angry at the sight of their children exposed to unpredictable weather with only flimsy tents as protection.
At least 68 families or more than 400 persons had to occupy 12 classrooms. Due to cramped quarters, many used the school’s equipment and facilities to make themselves comfortable.
With no other suitable location to house the Sambang I fire victims, students had to sacrifice the use of their modest classrooms.
The Sambag fire was reportedly caused by an angry neighbor who tossed a butane container which exploded.
While Dr. Rhea Mae Angtud, Cebu City superintendent of the Department of Education, said it was all right to use the classrooms as evacuation centers under an agreement with the Department of Interior and Local Government and Department of Social Welfare and Development – something done in the the wake of the devastation caused by Supertyphoon Yolanda—her appeal for evacuees to take care of the school’s facilities should be emphasized.
“What we would like to ask from them is to maintain the cleanliness of the school as well as its properties,” Angtud said.
The public school building and its facilities are funded by taxpayers’ money. Poverty and ignorance are not excuses for temporary occupants to misuse the property of kind hosts.
That said, both the families and the pupils are victims of the city government’s sluggish pace, even neglect, to build relocation sites or housing for families displaced by natural or man-made calamities.
The students could count themselves fortunate that the families lived in public land. This allowed fire victims to return and rebuild their homes.
At the rate fires errupt in Metro Cebu, and typhoons lash communities, low-cost emergency housing and relocation for evacuees should be a serious priority of Mayor Mike Rama’s administration.
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