Northern Samar drafts post-disaster recovery plan

TACLOBAN CITY, May 25 (PNA) –- Northern Samar province is now drafting the 2016-2019 typhoon Nona Rehabilitation and Recovery Plan, a blueprint that will spell out the strategy of the province to build back better after the December 2015 disaster.

National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA) Regional Director Bonifacio Uy said that the provincial government is expected to come up with the recovery plan within the second quarter of 2016.

NEDA and other members of the Regional Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council recently held a write shop to map out post-disaster plans of the province.

The local government had sought for technical assistance of NEDA, citing the latter’s experience from crafting the Yolanda Rehabilitation and Recovery Plan for Eastern Visayas.

“Preparing this plan is one of top priorities of our office since this will be the basis of the government’s response to help Northern Samar recover and build back better from typhoon Nona,” Uy said.

The writeshop focused on consolidating the programs, projects and activities, policy recommendations, and potential bottlenecks to implementation. These were earlier identified in a rehabilitation and recovery planning workshop conducted on March 10 to 11 this year in Catarman, Northern Samar, participated by various stakeholders from the provincial and regional levels.

Projects and activities will comprise the Nona investment program with specific cost estimates per year of implementation. The recovery plan dubbed as “Padayon” (a local term for continue) is divided into four sectors - infrastructure, social, productive, and cross-sectoral.

Internationally known as Melor, typhoon Nona made its first landfall over Batag Island, Laoang town in Northern Samar on December 14 last year. It moved in a northwest direction, leaving destruction on its path largely in the northern coastal towns of the province.

Nona is the strongest typhoon to hit the province in 34 years with a reported peak intensity of 10-minute sustained winds at 175 kilometers per hour.

The typhoon has killed 10 residents in Northern Samar, destroyed 65,000 houses and the farming sector suffered about PHP100 million worth of damage. (PNA)
JMC/SARWELL Q. MENIANO