Akbayan party chairperson Risa Hontiveros Baraquel leads the send-off of volunteers on Monday to Tacloban City for typhoon Yolanda’s first-year commemoration. The volunteers served a year ago in Yolanda-affected areas. (MNS photo)
MANILA (Mabuhay) – Most survivors of Typhoon Yolanda in Eastern Visayas are living on less than P34 a day, a study by research group IBON revealed.
The study said that in a survey of 1,094 respondents in six Eastern Visayas provinces, 8 out of 10 families earn less than P5,000 on the average every month. Most of the respondents belong to families with five or more members.
Typhoon Yolanda battered Eastern Visayas last year, affecting the livelihood of nearly 6 million workers in agriculture, fishing, trade and transport.
IBON said that agricultural income in the affected areas has been estimated to have dropped by 50 percent to 70 percent after the devastation.
Eastern Visayas, which is among the poorest regions in the country, relies heavily on agriculture.
IBON said government’s response to the urgent needs of the typhoon survivors is not only slow and inadequate, it also fails to address livelihood issues that cause millions to be poor and vulnerable.
Government data showed that only 215,471 families have been given livelihood support through its short-term “Cash for Building Livelihood Assets.”
IBON said this could mean that as much as some 780,000 families have either no livelihood support or are relying on scattered efforts of non-government organizations (NGOs) and the private sector.
The typhoon displaced an estimated 918,621 families and destroyed about 1.2 million homes. (MNS)