OCD distributing rice to Kanlaon eruption evacuees

The Office of Civil Defense has started distributing a total of 695 sacks of rice to the different evacuation centers of Kanlaon evacauees.

Donato Sermeno III, OCD regional director for the Negros Island Region, said on Friday that the rice is a request of their central office from the National Food Authority (NFA).

Sermeno said that they have delivered 100 sacks to La Carlota City and another 310 sacks will be delivered to La Castellana.

The evacuation centers in La Castellana, La Carlota City, Bago City and Canlaon City in Negros Oriental will be the target beneficiaries of the rice assistance from the OCD.

Sermeno added that they are still collating data on the rice consumption of the evacuees in the four localities.

Data from the Department of Social Welfare and Development showed that a total of 7,900 families composed of 24,891 persons in Negros Occidental are affected by the eruption of Kanlaon volcano.

Data also showed that 1,766 families or 5,657 individuals are temporarily staying in 14 evacuation centers in the province.

Meanwhile, a total of 2,553 families or 8,302 individuals are living with relatives or their friends.

The DSWD has a stockpile of 153,771 of family food packs worth P111,568,892.08 and food and non-food items of 28,258 amounting to P49,086,122.25.

The DSWD in Western Visayas currently has standby funds worth P500,000.

Earlier, Negros Occidental Governor Eugenio Jose Lacson said that the provincial government will start the third wave of feeding for the internally displaced persons (IDPs), through its community kitchen within this week, with funds to be taken from a P50 million fund

“This time, we included rice in the feeding,” Lacson said.

In two previous feeding programs of the provincial government, local government units provided the rice during the delivery of food to evacuees.*