Death Toll in Pikit Rises as Food Relief Slow in Coming 
Refugees ask soldiers’ pull-out

Evacuees, worried over the death toll among children, hunger and ailments, are asking government to pull out its troops in Pikit and other towns. The troops withdrawal, they said, would allow them to go back to their homes and farms where they can feed themselves given a crisis in relief food and medicine.

By Romy Elusfa 
Contributed to Bulatlat.com

PIKIT, North Cotabato— The local Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) has been accused here by many war refugees of delayed stocks of food and medicine, aggravating their plight. If officials cannot address the rising death toll, sickness and hunger at the evacuation camps, they said, they should at least ask government soldiers to pull out so they could go back to their farms and get some food..

Ruben Omar, 37, of barangay Gli-gli, is worried of what may happen to his seven children at the evacuation center as they have gone weak for not eating enough food. His mother, 60-year-old Kabiba Tumagantong, died of tuberculosis at the Buisan evacuation center last week. She was one of 23 people who died in the evacuation centers, most of them children and the elderly. Two of his children, eight-year-old Rojamina and Jasmina, 10, were under dextros last week for diarrhea.

Desperate to feed his family, Ruben and four other men from over a hundred evacuee-families, took the risk of going home so they could attend to their farm and get some food. They went back to the evacuation center after three days.

“We went home because there is no more food here (evacuation center),” Ruben said in the dialect. “We started plowing our farm (in the village), but the soldiers strafed us. Now, even our barangay chairman is afraid to go home.”

Miriam Abdulah, 49, a mother of five, is not only worried of her family but is also anxious with the children in the evacuation center. Seven children have died of measles at Buisan Warehouse alone, the biggest refugee camp here.

There are minor things Miriam is concerned with. Many families do not have kitchen utensils at the evacuation center, for instance. But she is more alarmed with the threat of death, especially after a heavy rain that flooded the refugee camps the other day.

Troops pull-out

For her and all the others at the evacuation centers, the only way to stay alive is that they be allowed to go home to their homes and farms. This can only happen however if government soldiers pulled out from their villages.

“We know many of us may die here if the situation does not improve,” Miriam says. “But the chances of survival here are far greater than going back home with the soldiers still there.”

“The soldiers should be the ones to get out of our villages because they are not from there. But if they insist not to, they rather live there while we stay here at the evacuation center,” the irate mother said.

However, Teng Pagagaw, an evacuee from Barangay Tapekan, says evacuees at the Batulawan Elementary School see going home as useless. “We have nothing to go back there,” he says. “We were not able to plant rice because the irrigation canal is being rehabilitated.” 

Fr. Bert Layson, parish priest of this town and coordinator of the Interfaith Dialogue Program of the Archdiocese of Cotabato, said that they were expecting 500 bags of rice from the DSWD the other day, but until yesterday, the staple has yet to arrive.

The Disaster Response Team of the parish alone distributes over P600,000 worth of rice every three days, excluding other relief assistance to evacuees like noodles, sardines and dried fish.

Many sick evacuees are not given eenough food or medical attention, either. Among them is Noria Dudig, 32, who had a premature delivery last week and was diagnosed to be suffering from severe anemia. Her supposed second child died.

Desperate for medicines

Layson and Dr. Ernest Ryan Guevarra of Balik Kalipay, a non-government organization attending to medical needs of evacuees, said that anti-biotic and IB fluid are the medicines badly needed in the evacuation centers, the medicines that they no longer have.

While relief goods are dwindling, Layson said that some organizations extending relief assistance have helped aggravate the problem by extending relief goods without coordinating with them.

“We labored hard to come up with a system in distributing relief goods so everybody is served. We have a schedule for distribution, so we want to suggest to these organizations where to distribute their relief goods. If they want to help, they should respect and follow the system that the people here have set up,” Layson said.

The refugees came from Pikit and other towns of North Cotabato following government offensives against suspected strongholds of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) last January. The offensives reached their peak last February.

The renewed hostilies here and in other neighboring provinces have not only spawned tens of thousands of refugees but has also broken ceasefire between the MILF and government. President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo has pledged total war against the MILF. Bulatlat.com

Photos courtesy of Karapatan

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