Marcos on missing Yolanda victims: Let them not be unremembered

President Ferdinand "Bongbong" Marcos Jr. on Wednesday called on Filipinos to remember the victims of Super Typhoon Yolanda that are still unaccounted for.

In commemorating Yolanda's 10th anniversary, Marcos attended a mass and ceremony at Tacloban's seaside convention center, where many people were sheltering when Yolanda hit on November 8, 2013.

"To this day, we still do not know the true scope of our loss because we grieve and we mourn those who are dead but we must always keep a special place in our hearts, for those who we lost who are unaccounted [for], who are unrecorded," Marcos said.

"Let them not be unremembered, so when we grieve and when we mourn for our dead, keep a special place in your hearts for those who have not been known to have gone," he added.

"As we commemorate this 10th Year of Yolanda, let us continue to offer our prayers for our dearly departed, even as we find our own path towards peace, towards healing, [and] towards recovery."

Marcos urged the Yolanda Response Clusters to work closely with concerned local governments to address the lingering issues of the different affected communities.

"Let us continue to work hard so that we can provide them with the tools and the resources to rebuild their lives," he said.

Marcos said the government has been striving to ensure that tragedies of such magnitude will be avoided and will be adapted to.

"We continue to build disaster-resilient evacuation centers and emergency operations centers. We are also putting in place more centralized and efficient early warning systems, incident command systems, and disaster response strategies," he said.

Super Typhoon Yolanda (international name: Haiyan) left more than 7,000 people dead or missing.

In the evening of the commemoration, Tacloban residents plan to place lit candles along the city's streets in a somber remembrance of the friends and family lost in the disaster. —KBK, GMA Integrated News