HOUSES ALLEGEDLY CONSTRUCTED USING RICE HULLS
By ROGER M. BALANZA
Davao de Oro 2nd District Rep. Peter Ruwel Gonzaga said low cost housing units built by government for victims in Davao de Oro of Supertyphoon Pablo were defective and constructed using rice hulls.
Go to Maparat and you will find out that rice hulls were used in the construction of the houses, said Gonzaga in a recent interview with an FM radio station based in Tagum City, Davao del Norte.
Maparat is a barangay in Compostela municipality, among areas hit worse by the supertyphoon that devastated the Davao Region in December 2012.
In a news report in 2014 two years after Pablo, the NHA said that in Davao de Oro, it built 2,967 units spread in the towns of New Bataan (Barangays San Roque, 1,214 and Andap, 50), Monkayo (Union, 225 and Lower Ulip, 443), Brgy. New Visayas in Montevista (335), Brgy. Maparat, Compostela (300) and Brgy. Kidawa, Laak (400).
In the aftermath of the disaster that killed hundreds and displaced thousands of families in Davao de Oro, the worst hit province, President Rodrigo Duterte ordered the release of funds for contruction of houses for families who lost their homes in Pablo’s fury.
In the radio program, Gonzaga cited massive corruption in construction of the low-cost housing and accused Davao de Oro Board Member Arturo “Chiongkee” Uy as having benefitted from the alleged anomaly.
But Gonzaga is barking at the wrong tree for blaming Chiongkee, then the sitting governor when Pablo struck, as the houses were constructed by the National Housing Authority (NHA) and not by the Davao de Oro local government.
