TACLOBAN CITY – Farmers in Leyte’s third district received vegetable seeds and fertilizers for them to restart after they were hit by supertyphoon Yolanda from the Department of Agriculture and Senator Cynthia Villar, who chairs the committee of agriculture at the Senate.
Farmers from the towns of Tabango, Calubian, Villaba and Leyte town received the assistance from Villar and agriculture official on January 13. Fishermen from the same towns also received fishing equipment from the Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources (BFAR).
Villar, joined by Department of Agriculture Undersecretary Emerson Palad and Assistant Sec.Ed de Luna, BFAR National Director Asis Perez and BFAR-8 Director Juan Albaladejo, Philippine Coconut Authority Assistant Director Joel Pilapil, distributed 10 motorized bancas, 500 bags of different vegetables and fruit seeds for backyard gardening which includes kang kong, cucumber, tomato, water melon and mass melon per town in the district.
They also distributed 10 bags of corn seeds of 18 kg /bag and 125 coconut seedlings, initial with entitlement and certificate of maximum 500 per farmer based on 100 coconut seedlings per 1 hectare from PCA.
Sen. Villar also distributed 500 food packs; 115 sacks of fertilizer and 400 corrugated sheets and two boxes of umbrella nails good for 100 families in each towns of the district. Each family will receive 4 pieces of GI sheets and half a kilo of nails.
The senator emphasized that what they have distributed was a continuous program of the DA wherein the department will continue to distribute vegetables seeds for inter -cropping while for coconut seeds an additional of more than 20,000 seedlings will be distributed for the next six months.
She also said that an additional number of motorized fishing boats are expected to be given to all fishermen within the next six months. (LIZBETH ANN A. ABELLA)

TACLOBAN CITY – Health officials in the region expressed their fear of a possible outbreak of both measles and dengue fever cases in Yolanda-hit areas after cases of these ailments stalked typhoon victims.
Doctor Jose Llacuna, Jr., health director, said that as of their latest monitoring, 56 cases of dengue fever and similar number of cases of measles were monitored by their office in Yolanda-hit areas.
He said that Tacloban posted the highest number of  dengue fever cases at 26  followed by Babatngon with 21 cases, Palo ( three) Macarthur (2) while Tanauan, Carigara, Dulag and Alangalang, all towns in Leyte with one case each.
Llacuna said that the cases of dengue fever affecting residents of these areas have raised fears among them as this could result for a possible outbreak due to present condition as rains continued to be experienced in these places.
On top of this, the still uncollected heap of garbage in these areas would only compound the health risk for these people, the health regional director said.
The health official had called for cooperation of all as government alone cannot solve this problem.
He also called for people to avoid self medication as some diseases like chikungunya, pneumonia as he urged them instead to seek help from health authorities to immediately and properly provide health and medical assistance to them.
Llacuna added that residents in the affected area should observe the 4S program of the DOH to combat dengue. The 4S stands for the search and destroy, seek early consultation, self –protective and say no to fogging.
He, however, said that in Yolanda- affected areas, fogging was allowed because these were done by technical people.
“Fogging uses chemicals that are harmful to our health,” Llacuna said.
Fogging should also be done in a proper time added Llacuna.
For measles cases, the DOH had also recorded 56 cases which were noted in Tacloban, Carigara, Capoocan and Palo, all in Leyte; Oras and Can-avid, both from Eastern Samar. (ROEL T. AMAZONA)

Pascal Canning, 51, an Irishman, came to the Philippines on March 15, 2006, a few weeks after a landslide covered the entire village of Guinsaugon in St. Bernard, Southern Leyte. He found his wife Eden Lida from Maasin City and they married in 2008.
Like many foreigners who marry locals, Canning got used to the humdrum of rural life, until he opened a new beach hotel named Caimito.
Canning and his wife busied themselves with the day-to-day operation of the hotel, welcoming guests, foreigners and locals alike, to their resort.
Then supertyphoon Yolanda pounded Leyte and Samar on Nov. 8, 2013,  killing more than 6,000 people and flattening more than 1 million houses.
Canning and his wife no longer felt comfortable spending their nights enjoying the evening sky from their newly-built villas, knowing that some 100 kilometers away, entire villages had been swept away, leaving thousands of people homeless.
Canning decided to seek help from his friends in Ireland, starting what the Star Apple Leyte Fund on Nov. 17, 2013 on Facebook.
““I am from Ireland, living in Maasin, Southern Leyte. I set up this fund to help the people from the northern Leyte rebuild their lives. Star Apple Leyte Fund was created this week by me. It is for my friends in Ireland. US people are welcome to donate. If you have a problem with it not being a registered charity, just send your money to the Red Cross, etc. Every penny we take in will be accounted for and every penny will be spent on the displaced people. We have no administrative expenses,” Canning wrote.
By Dec. 19, 2013, Canning and his crew – including his brother Gary and cousin Declan—were already moving on to their second emergency housing project in Tolosa, Leyte, after completing 31 houses in Barangay Tugas in Tabango, Leyte, some four hours drive from his hotel in Maasin City.
Canning said he chose Tabango first because he had a friend there who was married to a Filipina from the area.
“It was total wipeout of the indigent houses. We built 31 12’x10’ houses with about 42 families. The lots are owned by a farmer who donated the trees,” he said.
Choosing Tolosa also gave him no problem in terms of land ownership.
“We needed a place to build without problems. They are not squatters. The indigents have permission to build on the land,” Pascal said.
Every built house gets a house number, and costs about 200 to 300 euros to build. Donors see what their donations are buying on Canning’s Facebook page.
“I am building 30 native homes. This process starts off with the chainsaw operators cutting the fallen coconut trees into 4×4, 4×2, 3×2 and 2×2 timber. My carpenters then build a wooden framed building, 12’ x 10’ and cover in corrugated galvanized steel. The house owner then covers the floor joists with split bamboo.
The outer walls are also covered in bamboo or whatever local materials are available from the land. They do not own the land, mind you,” Canning said.
“On completion, the new home owner then gets P500 (about €8) from our funds to finish off the inside. The cost is about €200 for each house. It would be cheaper if we were not so far from our own homes in Southern Leyte. The last part of the journey can only be undertaken by 4×4 vehicles,” Pascal wrote on his Facebook page.
“Because of my experience in building and the fact that I worked with Filipino carpenters and chainsaw operators before, I could not do nothing. I also speak some of the local language and most importantly understand the people and their culture,” he said.
“After the 30 houses? As long as I have funds I aim to build these basic houses until I die. In my opinion every family deserves a basic 12’ x 10’ place to call home,” he said.
But Canning and his team have already gone beyond 30 houses.
In Tolosa, where coastal areas went underwater due to the storm surge, Canning and his crew have allocated house numbers up to 42 already.
“There are many more homeless who will be in the next batch as long as funds keep coming in,” he said.
Aside from Canning’s friends and family back in the UK helping him, he also tied up with “Taga Maasin Ka Kung (TMKK)…,” an online group mainly composed of overseas Filipino workers from Maasin City which has been doing charity work for three years.
“The funding is by donations from my friends, and friends of friends,” Canning said.
As Star Apple Fund for Leyte and TMKK for Leyte are not yet registered charities, Canning began working on a foundation.
“The SEC (Security Exchange Commission) says I need to have P1 million (about €16,900) in a bank account to start a foundation. I don’t have one million, and even if I did, they expect to leave it there for about 10 days, whilst they check that it is there. So what about the people who need shelter? Housing them is my priority,” Canning said.
“The motto of Star Apple Leyte Fund will now change from ‘I Cannot Do Nothing’ to ‘We Cannot do Nothing’. The ‘We’ is our donors and volunteers,” he said.

By Ronald O. Reyes