NZ based Filipino worried for family

The Evangelical Alliance Relief Fund

PRESS RELEASE
September 28 2009

NZ based Filipino worried for family following floods in Philippines

New Zealand- based Filipina, Thelma Cruz, is worried for family members and community partners who have been affected by the heaviest floods to have hit the Philippines in more than 40 years.

Rain engulfed central areas of the Philippines causing severe wide-spread flooding and triggering landslides in Pampanga which buried houses and killed 35 of the total 106 reported dead so far. Among the hardest hit areas was Metro Manila.

Ms Cruz , who has lived in New Zealand for many years, said family members in Bulacan were among the 250,000 who have lost all their possessions and had their homes destroyed. The Philippines is bracing itself for more bad weather which could further devastate the area and cost more lives and suffering.

Ms Cruz is no stranger to similar situations having been involved in relief work and fund raising for flood victims in the early 1970s. She now works for TEAR Fund New Zealand where she is helping to co-ordinate relief efforts with TEAR Fund’s partners in the Philippines. TEAR Fund has just launched an appeal to bring relief to those most affected by the disaster.

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“Our highest concern is for the poorest of the poor who live in Manila’s slums. Some of them don’t stay long in displacement centres and most don’t have relatives they can stay with.” They tend to slip through the cracks in disaster situations, she said.

TEAR Fund’s partners are working with these slum communities and the homeless on the streets of Manila, as well as among the indigenous communities in Aurora Province.

“In the rural areas, displacements due to erosion, and the loss of crops will be of real concern to these indigenous communities.”

Ms Cruz said while Filipinos were resilient, but she urged Kiwis to not see this as just another disaster affecting a far-away Asian country, but to empathise with the victims’ hardships as they face the days ahead re-establishing their lives. Many like her family members and those less well off, will have to start from scratch again, she said.

To give to this appeal go to www.tearfund.org.nz or phone 0800 800 777.

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