Early recovery and rehabilitation of disaster victims/survivors is one of the organizational priorities of the Department of Social Welfare and Development. One of its programs which focuses in this matter is Emergency Shelter Assistance (ESA).

Two months ago, a 6.2 magnitude earthquake has hit the Central Luzon, more than 5,000 families were affected. DSWD immediately responded providing a total of ₱2,451,423.50 worth of assistance. Two days after the occurrence of the earthquake, staff were deployed in the affected areas to validate the reported damaged houses.

DSWD validated 3,135 damaged houses in the 3 provinces in region III, where 905 are totally damaged while 2,230 are partially. Most of the are from the province of Pampanga specifically from Porac, with 1,259 partially damaged houses and 653 totally damaged.

Funding for ESA was approved on June 6th and set to be released next month.

ESA provides financial assistance to affected families for their disaster-damaged houses. It has 2 categories: totally and partially damaged houses. In which ₱30,000 plus 10 days built-in Cash for Work (CFW) for the former, while  ₱10,000 plus 5 days built-in CFW for the latter. For Central Luzon, the rate of CFW is ₱300.