Sino engineer seized in South

COTABATO CITY — A Chinese engineer involved in an irrigation project in Carmen, North Cotabato was abducted by unidentified men last Wednesday, authorities said.

Superintendent Ruben Abapo, North Cotabato police director, said he has dispatched intelligence agents to the adjoining towns of Carmen, Kabacan and Matalam, to help local probers locate Zhang Zhong Qiang.

Zhang is the operations manager of Earthworks Construction, a Chinese company doing work on the Malitubog-Maridagao (Mal-Mar) irrigation facility in Barangay Kibenes, Carmen town.

The Chinese Embassy expressed concern yesterday over the safety of 59 other Chinese nationals in the project site.

Catholic radio station dxND reported yesterday that Zhang was last seen en route to Carmen from Davao City aboard a chartered taxi.

The taxi, the station said, was found abandoned at a highway junction in Matalam.

The Agence France Press reported that armed men flagged down the taxi and forcibly took Zhang to an unknown place.

Zhang’s case is not the first to have taken place in the vast Mal-Mar area.

In 1994, Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) rebels detained for days seven foreign engineers of the South Korean Shingzung Corp., which pioneered the construction of the Mal-Mar dam, to force the pullout of soldiers guarding the project then.

The hostages were later freed through the intercession of local leaders, including Maguindanao Gov. Zacaria Candao.

The Korean firm, as a consequence, stopped building the dam. The project has since then been hounded by security problems, including hostilities between soldiers and MILF rebels squabbling for control of strategic patches of land in the area.

Abapo said he has enlisted the help of religious leaders in locating Zhang, who was reportedly carrying a big amount of payroll money when he went missing. — With Aurea Calica