Yesterday was a day of much interest. I was supposed to go with Dan to the Bohol bicycle shop, but Dan never showed up and never contacted me. I located the Bohol bicycle shop on my own and found it closed. I spoke with one of the owners, and he spoke with a mechanic, but they wouldn’t do anything for me. They were busy cleaning their merchandise and had no time for repairs. He said that “maybe” they could do it in a week. The “maybe” in all his sentences annoyed me profoundly. I almost gave him a lecture about how a business owner really shouldn’t say “maybe” all the time when talking to a customer.

I decided to walk to the other bicycle shop, and on the way, I noticed large groups of people digging carefully through piles of mud and debris on the streets. This confused me, because all the piles like these had been picked through thoroughly. So what were these people searching for? Then the lightbulb went off. Store owners had been returning, and they had opened their stores and pushed out all the mud that had accumulated inside. Therefore, these piles of mud and junk were brand new piles, and since they had come from inside stores, they might contain valuable small items. I’m not sure if I’m smart to figure that out or dumb that it took me so long.

The other bicycle shop was also closed. Near this store was the hill containing the stations of the cross. I walked up the hill (with great difficulty because the path was covered in fallen trees and power lines) and took in the view of the city from up there. The destruction wasn’t nearly as apparent from up there. You had to be down on the ground to see it. On the way down, I passed many families living in very small shelters consisting of no more than three or four sheets of roofing tin stuck together or a bit of tarp hung over a tree trunk or tree branch. Still, everyone was smiling and laughing when I talked to them.

I went to the main bridge over the river in order to watch the backhoe at work clearing the water below. While there, I spotted a white guy who looked to be in charge. I had seen a dump truck with the “Cash-for-Work Cleanup Drive” sign on it carrying loads away from this site, and I wondered if this man was connected with that program. I spoke with him, and though I didn’t get any specific details, it turns out that he was a private individual who had paid his own way to come to Tacloban to help. At first, I understood him to mean that he owned this heavy equipment and had paid for it all himself. Then he began using words like “acquired”, and I figured out that in looking for ways to help, he had become something of an assistant to the mayor, and he was coordinating these efforts – finding the equipment locally and putting it into action. Being just a tourist and no one official, I didn’t want to press him too hard for specific details.

I learned that he was not connected with the “Cash-for-Work Cleanup Drive.” And from his comments, I got the distinct impression that he did not approve of it or the organization behind it. He seemed to feel that they were throwing large amounts of money around at random, and this would not be of real use in the end and might even do a lot of harm, particularly since the amounts involved were much greater than the local people were used to. I don’t know if it is true, but he said that the organization was giving cash gifts to every family in certain areas – up to 25,000 pesos for a large family.

I had become intensely curious about this program and decided to look into it a bit more. Earlier, while leaving the fire station, I had stopped to chat with a group of young men cleaning the streets. They didn’t have official city uniforms on, and I wondered if they were volunteers. They weren’t volunteers as it turned out but paid city employees earning 220 pesos a day. Then near the approach to the hill of the stations of the cross, I encountered a very large group of people of assorted ages working to clear muck from the river. They were trundling down the narrow alleyways pulling all manner of conveyances behind them – plastic buckets, wire fan covers, scraps of wood, etc. I made the mistake of asking some of them a yes/no question about whether they were volunteers. They all said yes. But this didn’t seem right. The work was far too purposeful and too energetic. There was something weird about it. I dug a bit deeper and learned that they were actually part of the “Cash-for-Work Cleanup Drive” and were being paid 500 pesos a day for this work by the Buddhist Tzu Chi Foundation from Taiwan.

The foreigner who had organized the heavy equipment clean-up for the mayor clearly had problems with them paying the local people this much money – an amount that is considerably higher than the government-mandated minimum daily wage. I couldn’t quite follow his argument, but even I could see that paying these people 500 pesos a day to clean the city while the city workers themselves earned only 220 pesos a day could cause problems. I also wondered how in the world it could be monitored and organized. I especially began to wonder this when I saw a sign from the foundation saying that they had nearly 10,000 people working in the “Cash-for-Work Cleanup Drive.” How could 10,000 people possibly be organized into doing anything like useful work?

The foreigner I’d spoken with said that if I really wanted to see this program in action, I should return to the bridge area at around 3:30. That’s when people quit work for the program and came to get paid. This was done at the foundation’s headquarters at the nearby Leyte Progressive High School. It was there that I saw the sign announcing how many people were involved in the program.

At 3:30, I returned to the school, and a representative of the Tzu Chi Foundation invited me inside to look around and talk with people. There was a large group of Filipinos milling around the gates, and I clearly was out of place there. The rep singled me out – assuming I was a journalist or a relief worker – and invited me inside. It was getting very close to the time to distribute the money, so no one could spare even a minute to talk to me. That was fine with me. I was happy to poke around and just observe the action. A couple of large trucks filled with relief goods had arrived, and some of the “Cash-for-Work Cleanup Drive” people were busy unloading it. They had gotten down to the rice when I showed up, and a woman there counted 567 large sacks of rice being carried from the trucks inside the school. All the food and water and other supplies had been held up in Cebu for many days and they had been awaiting it eagerly. It would now be divided up into family-sized portions and handed out at relief centers. I don’t know how or where or when.

When the large truck was empty and moved away, I was astonished to see that the school’s open courtyard now contained thousands of Filipinos all sitting neatly on the ground in rows waiting patiently to be paid.

I had imagined a mob scene of chaos and confusion, but it was one of the most organized and efficient processes I had ever witnessed. I don’t know if this astonishing level of calm and organization was the result of the skills of the Tzu Chi Foundation or of the natural cooperative nature of Filipinos, but it was there. Perhaps it was because of the allure of the 500 pesos. That’s a lot of money here – especially in these post-typhoon days – and people were quite intent about collecting it. They were more than willing to sit quietly in rows if that meant they were going to get paid.

An organizer stood in front of this large crowd and spoke for between ten and fifteen minutes. She spoke in Tagalog or Waray, so I couldn’t understand her. However, it was pretty clear that she was talking about community spirit and working together and other things that likely tie in nicely with the foundation’s Buddhist message. I guess listening to this, along with the day’s labor, was the price to be paid for the 500 pesos. As an observer, I became quite impatient with the woman. I imagined the people were quite tired and simply wanted their pay so they could go home. But the Filipinos waited patiently and they applauded politely at all the right moments. Everyone was also very quiet while the woman spoke.

Finally, the time came to distribute the money. By then, I had learned something of the system. In the morning, the workers had been divided into groups of ten with a group leader. Each group was assigned an identification code consisting of a letter and a number – A1, A2, A3, B1, B2, B3, etc. The names of the group members were written down on a sheet of paper along with their signature, and the group leader was given a laminated card with her group’s code on it. When the group’s code was called out over the P.A. system, the group’s leader (identified by a plain grey T-shirt, which all leaders were required to wear), went up to a foundation rep sitting in a chair and handed over the piece of paper. In return, the foundation rep counted out ten crisp 500-peso notes. The group leader immediately returned to the line of people sitting on the ground and handed out one of the notes to each person. Then they dispersed and the next set of group codes were called. This process went very quickly and in a remarkably short time, everyone had received their pay and had gone home, probably to return in the morning.

The Tzu Chi Foundation had three such distribution centers, and I assume that each handled a third of the total of workers. That would mean about 3,300 workers had been paid at this site. Yet, the way it was organized, money had to paid only to the 330 group leaders, and this went relatively quickly.

I imagine it would be quite easy to come up with objections to this program. I’ve already mentioned one – that the 500-peso daily wage is too high. It’s also impossible to monitor all these people or even to assign them tasks. As far as I could make out, they were completely free to return to their barangays and do whatever work they felt needed doing. It was all managed on the honor system. To that extent, perhaps the work itself was of little value. As I mentioned earlier, the real work to be done required heavy machinery like front end loaders and dump trucks. A group of ten people with just one shovel (all that was provided by the foundation), perhaps can’t accomplish very much. And even if they gathered up piles of debris and garbage, what were they to do with it? Were foundation trucks detailed to come around and pick it up? I don’t know.

Certainly, there was an immense amount of room for fraud in the system, too. As far as I could tell, people could easily just sign up and do nothing all day long and then return for their cash handout. No one would know except the other people in their group of ten. It appeared that people had to be physically present in full groups of ten in order to collect their money, so at least people would not easily be able to just join multiple groups and collect many times over. But even if a certain percentage (even a high percentage) of the people defrauded the system, and even if the work they did was of little ultimate value, did it really matter? People needed money and the foundation was clearly wealthy enough to be able to just hand out money to everyone. But instead of just handing it out, they had set up a system where people had to work to get it – and the work was aimed at cleaning up their own communities. Nothing is perfect, and perhaps this system will end up doing a lot of good. It certainly ties in well with the strong community ties and sense of social responsibility that I’ve noted many times in the Filipino community.

 

Tags: fire, Leyte Progressive High School, Philippines Bike Trip 2013, Super Typhoon Yolanda, Tacloban, Tzu Chi Foundation