Last Friday was a terrible day for the Philippines after a blogger exposed to the nation and the world that the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) was stockpiling relief goods donated by foreign donors at its warehouses. 

Terrible because amid continued efforts by citizen organizations to drum up support and gather relief aid for typhoon victims in many parts of Luzon, here we have the DSWD not doing its job of swiftly repacking and sending the relief goods to victims.

Many bloggers and users of other social media like Twitter, Plurk and Facebook expressed surprise, frustration and condemnation over the inefficiency of DSWD, with the blog report coming out on the very day typhoon Ramil was causing so much stress among victims of typhoon Pepeng in parts of Northern Luzon. Many were (are) still staying in makeshift dwellings or in evacuation centers and they badly need a steady supply of food, cooking and washing implements, blankets, etc. – and plenty of them could be found in the DSWD warehouses.

As swift as the negative reactions (one even expected a march of people carrying pitchforks to go to the DSWD warehouses), many bloggers immediately sought a confirmation from the DSWD. A number went to the DSWD warehouses to check, and others sought out Esperanza Cabral, the secretary of the DSWD. On Twitter, Plurk and Facebook, users called on members of the media to take on the blog report as a basis for coming out with a story, with many asking ABS-CBN, GMA, Inquirer and online journalists to take on the issue.

By late afternoon of the same day, Cabral would be all over online and network news admitting that DSWD warehouses remain full of relief goods and blamed the lack of volunteers as the reason for the agency’s failure to repack them. In so many words, Cabral’s official statement did not deny the basic allegations hurled by the blogger against the DSWD: That the DSWD was not acting quickly enough and was not doing its job as quickly as the situation in the typhoon-hit areas demanded. (Whatever happened to the DSWD’s Bayanihang Bayanihan Program for volunteers, we do not know.)

Hearing Cabral talk about lack of volunteers, a number went straight to the DSWD warehouses. But they were turned away.

One group, Rock Ed Philippines, did not hesitate to offer help to Cabral and the DSWD in trying to mobilize volunteers. The mere fact that Cabral accepted Rock Ed’s offer again confirms that the DSWD has in its possession stockpiles of relief goods because they badly need volunteers to have them repacked.(By the way, Rock Ed continues to call for volunteers to help the DSWD.)

It is thus unfortunate that Paul Farol wrote and echoed many allegations in his Oct. 24 blog post here on AsianCorrespondent.com which were obviously false and included equally-false premises that appear to have been contrived to forward a conclusion that Filipino bloggers acted irresponsibly vis-a-vis the DSWD relief goods debacle. Facts however say otherwise:

  • Did the bloggers fail to seek confirmation? No.
  • Was the blog post in question factually wrong? No.

The worst charge raised in Farol’s post – that the online uproar and the cyber riot would disappoint or dissuade foreign donors from providing the Philippines with typhoon relief aid – is, to say the least, baseless. In fact, the vigilance of the Filipino online communities reflects a continuing commitment to ensuring relief aid gets to the victims fast, to make the Arroyo government and the DSWD accountable to the victims, donors and the public, and to lay bare problem areas in the DSWD’s disaster relief operations so they can be addressed. What would be wrong and irresponsible would be to hide the blog post away from public view.

Farol’s blog post did not even dare mention what the world media noticed from Day One: Online Filipinos stepping up to help, to gather factual and accurate information and to actually mobilize people and resources to provide aid. Why? Because it won’t help the contrived conclusion. Here is a sampling of what world media have to say about online Filipinos in the aftermath of typhoons Ketsana and Parma:

Farol was also silent about the other brazen instances of government perfidy in connection with relief aid, incidents that compel bloggers and online Filipinos to be more vigilant and critical: President Arroyo handing out tattered, unusable clothes to evacuees in Baguio City, and her irked reaction to long lines of people seeking aid outside of the presidential palace. Lest we forget, the DSWD also got a spanking from Filipinos here and abroad for monopolizing control of customs duties-free foreign donations.

I leave Farol and his like-minded sources to their fantasies. Meanwhile, I call on everyone to continue to volunteer, to donate, and to spread the word about ongoing relief operations, including those spearheaded by online Filipinos themselves: