Published May 14, 2018, 6:24 PM
By Ben Rosario

The House committee on housing and urban development opens on Tuesday its inquiry into the irregularities that tainted the housing projects for victims of the 2013 Zamboanga City siege.

Negros Occidental Rep. Alfredo “Albee” Benitez, committee chairman, said the House panel has invited officials of the National Housing Authority and contractors of the Zamboanga City housing projects.

City officials were also invited to air complaints against the construction of substandard houses for their constituents.

Benitez noted that families who lost their homes due to the Zamboanga siege in 2013 are being awarded housing units in resettlement sites that are of substandard quality, aside from lacking acceptable sanitation, ventilation and power facilities.

Benitez noted that said victims of the 2013 supertyphoon Yolanda in Tacloban City have also to contend with poorly built houses that government contractors offered.

The lawmaker’s suspicions were correct when he, together with Zamboanga city officials and an inspection team from the lower house, fell into murky creek in Sitio Hongkong, Barangay Rio Hondo, after the wooden footbridge they were stepping on collapsed.

Benitez and his team of inspectors from the housing and urban development panel met the accident while on an inspection tour of housing and community facilities built by government for the Zamboanga siege victims when they met the accident.

The victims suffered minor injuries.

“Nothing more can convince us that people left homeless as a result of the 2013 Zamboanga siege have become victims twice. We became victims ourselves,” Benitez said.

The senior administration congressman revealed that there were evidences indicating that the housing and facilities built for the Zamboanga siege victims were made of substandard materials and inferior engineering.

Benitez had sought legislative inquiry into the construction of housing projects for families rendered homeless following man-made and natural disasters.

He said residents of the housing project built by contractors of the National Housing Authority are assured of immediate action on their complaints about the substandard housing units awarded to them.

Benitez and the housing panel have also inspected the sanitation, ventilation and power facilities in the Zamboanga City relocation communities for displaced city residents.