Taal communities receive aid from Smart
Credit to Author: The Manila Times| Date: Fri, 21 Feb 2020 18:02:16 +0000
PLDT wireless unit Smart Communications Inc. extends support to families from communities affected by the Taal Volcano eruption by providing cash-for-work assistance, materials to rebuild homes and early warning tools for selected communities.
Smart coordinated with the social welfare office of the Laurel municipality to give cash to select families from Barangay Buso-Buso in exchange for cleaning and rehabilitation of their own homes.
Most of the affected residents still stay at evacuation centers, but the municipal social welfare office has allowed some to go back to their homes at specified times to clean up, feed animals and take care of other household concerns.
Laurel also got disaster warning tools in the form of two batingaws, bells or sirens used by communities as alarms.
Longtime residents of the San Luis coastal area in Batangas saw their homes and sources of livelihood destroyed. Most of the heads of families in this community were construction workers, fisherfolk, or farmers who raised livestock.
Smart provided pawid (nipa palm), sawali (bamboo mats) and other housing materials that could be used to build new homes as they moved from the seaside to the town’s mountainous areas. Around 70 Aeta families or 300 individuals, currently sheltered in Barangay Banoyo, were selected as beneficiaries.
Smart’s assistance to these communities is part of a broader community relief program of parent company PLDT and its affiliate companies under the Tulong Kapatid (Sibling Assistance) consortium.