Daanbantayan Mayor Gilbert Arrabis, who assumed office after the 2025 elections, has expressed growing frustration over the slow pace of national intervention following the 6.9-magnitude earthquake that struck his town on September 30, 2025. While aid from various local government units (LGUs) has trickled in, the damage to the town’s infrastructure, particularly the Municipal Hall, remains unaddressed.
On Monday, May 25, 2026, I visited the temporary shelter of the Daanbantayan municipal offices and met with Mayor Arrabis, a fellow lawyer and Visayan, after completing a transaction at the municipal assessor’s office. My son, Dr. Eugene Dominic, accompanied me. During our nearly hour-long conversation, Mayor Arrabis showed delight at the unexpected visit, but frustration was evident as he discussed the long-delayed assistance from the National Government to rehabilitate the town and establish a new town hall, as the current site is no longer safe.
Mayor Arrabis is effectively governing a town hall that no longer exists. Eight months after the earthquake, the municipal building remains a cordoned-off ruin of twisted rebar and shattered concrete. I also noticed the derelict Catholic church nearby, which I was seeing for the first time, as Monday was my first visit to Daanbantayan since the tremor.
The mayor, who inherited this disaster shortly after taking office, is currently running a first-class municipality out of shipping containers and modular tents in Barangay Pajo, behind the town’s national high school. He outlined two options for building a new town hall: purchasing a private lot in a good location, though the price per square meter is prohibitive, or using the town’s own lot, which previously served as the oval grounds where high school buildings are erected. However, the national agency is delaying approval for the use of that lot to begin construction of a new, larger town hall.
Mayor Arrabis told us he had written to President BBM on this matter but has yet to receive a reply from Malacañang. Although no specific check was provided for town hall construction, a major move by Cebu Governor Pam Baricuatro aims to break the bureaucratic deadlock. In response to delays in disaster fund releases, Governor Baricuatro signed Executive Order (EO) 30, which establishes an Executive Committee (ExeCom) for the Provincial Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council. This committee is mandated to eliminate bureaucratic delays and expedite the evaluation of recovery plans.
Mayor Arrabis now has some support with the creation of the Provincial ExeCom. For Daanbantayan, this means a dedicated body whose sole purpose is to push stalled infrastructure projects through the Provincial Board. “Hopefully, by the time the next rainy season hits, they shall have more than a modular tent to call home,” the mayor expressed.
The support Mayor Arrabis seeks has shifted from a financial battle to an administrative one. The creation of the Provincial ExeCom is the first real sign that the government is trying to cut the red tape holding back Daanbantayan’s P200 million budget for its town hall. After the May 20 distribution, where 302 Daanbantayan families finally received their P10,000 cash aid, the mayor used the momentum to pivot back to the P200M budget for the Municipal Building. He argued that individual relief is insufficient without institutional restoration and is pushing the newly formed Provincial ExeCom to make the Daanbantayan Town Hall their first fast-track case study.
There is a jarring disconnect. While the Senate argues over remote voting and procedural admissibility for the impeachment trial of Vice President Sara Duterte, Mayor Arrabis is fighting for P200 million for a new municipal complex — a budget currently trapped in limbo at Fisaro (For Issuance of Special Allotment Release Order) status. The mayor said they have been waiting for months for the Philippine Space Agency (PhilSA) to release the satellite clearance required to start building. Despite public pressure on PhilSA to prioritize the “Northern Cebu Recovery Hub” mapping, nothing has moved quickly.
Mayor Arrabis has no issue with the required clearances, such as geohazard clearance from the Mines and Geosciences Bureau, geospatial mapping from PhilSA, and technical validation from the Department of Public Works and Highways. What frustrates him is the slow, cold bureaucracy that treats a fallen town hall like a routine permit application.
Compared to Bogo City, just a few kilometers south, Daanbantayan has been left behind. As the epicenter, Bogo received “ground zero” attention, with cabinet visits and a P75 million recovery grant. Today, Bogo is retrofitting its offices, while Daanbantayan still waits for a satellite to confirm it is safe to dig a foundation. There is irony in the timing: Senator Cayetano’s rise to the Senate presidency was fast-tracked in a single afternoon because national interest demanded it, yet the reconstruction of a town serving 93,000 Cebuanos is slow-walked through a maze of administrative requirements.
