The National Historical Commission of the Philippines (NHCP) expects that the Office of the President (OP) can allocate some 1 billion pesos in the budget to boost the recovery of heritage houses and churches, as well as other ancient and cultural assets broken on Wednesday 7. 0 magnitude earthquake that shook parts of northern Luzon.
At a press conference Thursday at the Metropolitan Museum, NHCP President Dr. Rene Escalante said the amount of one billion pesos they earned in 2013 from the PO to repair heritage structures in Bohol, Cebu and Eastern Samar broken by an earthquake in October, and Supertyphon Yolanda, the following month.
The recovery of 25 heritage churches and other cultural assets carried out in partnership with the National Museum and the National Commission for Culture and the Arts.
“We are going to validate those injured reports,” he said, in order to determine the appropriate amount of recovery budget they will request from the OP.
As this unfolded, House Speaker Martin Romualdez Jr. pledged to approve an invoice that will allocate budget to rebuild heritage structures destroyed by the earthquake.
At President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. ‘s briefing with local government leaders in Abra on Thursday, Romualdez said, “We will also join the smart senator from Ilocos Norte [Imee Marcos] in her call for budget needs for heritage restoration. cultural sites, as well as, of course, the various infrastructures in the scenario report.
On Wednesday, Tourism Secretary Christina Garcia Frasco asked the infrastructure branch of the Tourism Infrastructure Business Zone Authority ‘S (Tieza) of the Ministry of Tourism to explore tactics to expand assistance to cultural and heritage sites affected by the strong earthquake.
“We will ask Tieza to prioritize the assessment of cultural assets affected by the recent earthquake through detecting the need to protect our heritage and cultural treasures for the benefit and well-being of our future generations,” Frasco said.
Among the main heritage sites affected by the earthquake are Vigan Heritage Village and Syquia Mansion Museum, of which they are a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and the Parish Church of St. Catherine of Alexandria, a nineteenth-century Baroque church in Tayum and declared a National Cultural Treasure. through the National Museum. (See “Heritage, Cultural Sites Suffer Earthquake Damage,” in BusinessMirror, July 27, 2022. )
Meanwhile, Escalante called on “stakeholders to help us protect parts of the [heritage] buildings and store the debris in a separate location, so we can restore it to its previous structure. “
However, the NHCP will want to find out which broken homes will want to be restored first due to the lack of rehabilitation budget. “they were personal property, so we still have to ask our lawyers to examine this because we know we are prohibited from using the public budget for personal property. The challenge is that its declaration as a heritage site would cover not only public buildings, but also heritage. houses and surrounding streets. The PNH requested the assistance of the Attorney General’s Office in this matter.
But he said he was confident that “the recovery of those broken houses will be faster than those in Cebu and Bohol” because the former have not suffered as much as the houses in central Visayas, many of which have collapsed.