MMDA wants your used tarpaulins for Yolanda relief efforts

The Metropolitan Manila Development Authority (MMDA) is asking outdoor advertising agencies to donate used tarpaulins that can be reused as improvised shelters for thousands of families displaced by super typhoon “Yolanda.”“Many residents have lost their homes and even evacuation centers have been destroyed. We have to send all the help we can to these people so they can recover the soonest possible time,” the MMDA Chairman Francis Tolentino said Wedenesday.“Instead of these tarpaulins rotting in their warehouses, it is better that advertising agencies hand them over to government relief units where it can be put to good use,” he adds.The MMDA is currently busy collecting billboard materials and tarpaulins that were confiscated during its “Baklas Billboard campaign,” which stripped non-compliant giant OOH assets in 2011. The move was prompted by another strong typhoon called “Milenyo” in 2006.Tarpaulins confiscated by the MMDA has been put to good use in December 2012 during typhoon Pablo in Mindanao, where it was used to aid relief efforts in New Bataan, Compostela Valley and Cateel, Davao Oriental.