THE Cagayan de Oro City Social Welfare and Development(CSWD) Office will be facilitating psycho-social activities for internally displaced persons (IDPs), who have taken shelter with relatives in the city to help prevent the onset of post traumatic stress due to their experiences in the siege of Marawi City.
The CSWD office said 485 families or about 2,300 individuals have sought shelter with kin in nine villages in the city.
The said villages include Macabalan, Consolacion, Kauswagan, Balulang, Iponan, Puerto, Pagatpat, Indahag and 31.
The CSWD also recorded two families staying at an evacuation center in Indahag village after they sought help from the City Government.
Threjann Ace Noli, CSWD in-charge for relief operations and profiling, said some 25 social work interns will undergo training this weekend and will be tasked to facilitate the psycho-social sessions with the IDPs.
Noli said exposure to violence has been known to cause emotional and psychological disturbance among IDPs making pyscho-social processing imperative.
“The intervention is a preventive mechanism. They may not show the symptoms now but later, it may surface,” Noli said.
Noli said all members of the team that will conduct the debriefing and counseling are Maranaos since they have same level of faith.
The CSWD also said relief efforts have started after the IDPs were profiled by village officials.
The relief assistance includes five kilos of rice and halal canned goods.
Part of the profiling is the listing of basic demographic details of the person including name, address, contact number and the family where they are staying.
“Ga-distribute na ta relief sa Macabalan next dayon is Kauswagan and Concolacion. SOP nato nga maghatag pero katong dili modawat ok ra gihapon (We distributed the relief goods in Macalaban, Kauswagan and Concolacion. It’s our standard operating procedure to give but it’s still okay if someone will refuse),” Noli said.
“Ang naa sa evacuation center sa Indahag amo na gitabangan kay wala man gyud silay masak-an diri (We prioritized evacuees staying in Indahag since they don’t have relatives here),” Noli added.
Meanwhile, City Councilor Reuben Daba on Wednesday, May 31, urged authorities to inspect the city’s streets to check whether there are any more IDPs from Marawi City.
Daba, chairman of the social services committee, said he has observed presence of Muslim people in Divisoria and Bulua areas but unsure if they are evacuees from Marawi City and have been staying on the streets for some time.
Daba said evacuees are welcome in the city but said authorities must ensure no extremists are not among them.
The councilor urged the IDPs to also help local authorities in rooting out suspicious personalities acting as civilians.
Once the unrest due to skirmishes between the Maute group and government soldiers subsides, Daba said, the City Government will help ferry the IDPs back to Marawi City.
