RIGHT AFTER calamities have ravaged homes and communities, the government mounts relief and rescue work with speed and vigor – and still has energy left to provide photo-op events for the media. But when it comes to the more difficult tasks of rehabilitation and recovery, or even preparing communities for when the next disaster comes – the downtime between calamities – the government takes on the character of a drunken turtle, rolling out projects and releasing funds in slow and scattered fashion.

AMONG THE scores of projects launched in the wake of super typhoon Yolanda, one assisted the victims in a direct, meaningful way: the reconstitution of the civil registry records of a targeted 100,000 persons.

A FEW weeks after Super Typhoon Yolanda rampaged through Eastern Visayas in early November 2013, the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) found itself caught in a swirl of controversies regarding the repacking and delivery of relief goods.

DISASTERS USUALLY bring people together, but a few weeks after Yolanda, a video that seemed to highlight a political divide amid tragedy went viral.