Haiyan survivors left in tents

A young Filipino boy carries a sack at a coastal village in Tacloban city, central Philippines. Photo / AP

It has been a year since Typhoon Haiyan reduced Melissa Rivera's seaside neighbourhood to wasteland - and a year since government workers hauled her husband's corpse from the bathroom where she had been forced to store it for nearly a week.

Days later, she fled the ruins of their home in the Philippines city of Tacloban on a US transport plane, thinking all she had left of her husband Rogelio was a wallet salvaged from his trousers containing some soggy bank notes and a photograph.

Then came the discovery, two months later, that she was carrying his child - not that it has brought her much consolation. "I feel sad because her father is no more," said Rivera, who gave birth to a girl in July. "How can I support the kids?"

One year after Haiyan, families across Tacloban are grappling with similar questions as political squabbles and the long shadow of Ferdinand Marcos, the former dictator, hamper efforts to revive the once picturesque seaside city.

Nearly 8000 people died when Typhoon Haiyan hit the Philippines on November 8 last year, with Tacloban the worst-affected city. Nearly 30,000 houses were destroyed, and hundreds of victims' bodies were never found.

In the weeks after the catastrophe, politicians promised to work fast to rebuild their city. But Rivera is among an estimated 15,000 people still living in temporary shelters or tents.

"My life yesterday was simple but happy - but my husband is dead now," said the 41-year-old, who has six children, no job and lives in a flimsy plywood shack feet from where her husband died. "Sometimes I ask my friends and they help me, but I am ashamed of always asking for their help."

Dorothy Anne Cablao, 29, and her son John Michael, 8, were lucky to be evacuated from their home in the San Jose district hours before a fierce storm surge obliterated the area, killing hundreds of their neighbours.

But a year later they are still living in a mould-ridden tent provided by the UNHCR, the UN's Refugee Agency, fewer than 20m from the sea, where each thunderstorm rekindles the fear of another disaster. "We are hoping and praying that the NGOs will help us because the Government cannot help us," she said.

Some survivors have been moved out of the danger zone to temporary relocation centres in the countryside north of Tacloban. But the centres, while safer, are distant and mud-clogged. Work opportunities are few and far between.

Alfred Romualdez, Tacloban's Mayor, said his administration was fighting to help such families get back on their feet. "No one is going to get left behind," he said, standing beside the wreckage of his beach-front mansion, another victim of the typhoon.

But aid workers, campaigners and government officials complain that reconstruction funds are not reaching those in need fast enough.

A government report outlines plans to rebuild a "resilient, vibrant and livable" city, but admits it will have to do so with depleted resources.

"We don't have money," said Maria Lagman, Tacloban's housing and development secretary, asked why so few survivors had been rehoused. "Until now the national government hasn't given us a single cent to build these houses."

Efleda Bautista, a director of People Surge, a campaign group founded by survivors, blamed rampant corruption. A 2.3 billion ($4.7 billion) rehabilitation "master-plan", approved by the Philippines President this week, had not been implemented, she said. On the anniversary of the disaster - this Saturday - Rivera plans to walk to church to say a prayer for her late husband and the six children he left behind. "It's very sad. But life must go on."