Health, education services project launched in Basilan

COTABATO CITY, Philippines  – Public officials and hundreds of Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) guerrillas jointly launched Thursday in Basilan’s "most dangerous town" a “government services convergence project” designed to benefit the area’s marginalized sectors.

Dan Laksaw Asnawi, chief of the MILF’s 114th Base Command, and hundreds of his followers participated in the launching by ARMM Gov. Mujiv Hataman and provincial officials of the regional government’s Health; Education; Livelihood; Peace and Governance; and Security (HELPS) project in Barangay Cambug in Al-Barka town, scene of the fiercest rebel-military hostilities in recent years.

It was in Al-Barka where government forces suffered heavy losses in encounters with Asnawi’s group between 2007 and 2011, in hostilities that hogged the headlines, detailing how several of the military fatalities ended up decapitated.

Hataman said the project, where line agencies of the ARMM are to pool their resources and manpower to hasten the delivery of services in selected HELPS beneficiary areas, will benefit Yakan and Tausog families in Barangay Cambug and surrounding districts, which are known bastions of the MILF.

“It’s important for us to embark on undertakings like these now while we wait for the successful, fruitful culmination of the on-going peace talks between the government and the MILF,” Hataman said.

The HELPS project aims to address malnutrition, poor education, poverty and underdevelopment in many areas affected by armed conflicts.

Hataman also reassured Asnawi and his men, who attended the event in their combat uniforms, of his administration’s support to the Framework Agreement on the Bangsamoro (FAB).

The agreement, signed last October 15, 2012 by the GPH and MILF panels in Malacañang, aims to establish a new autonomous political entity to replace the ARMM.

Asnawi told Hataman and other public officials who attended the project’s launching  that they are not opposed to peace and development efforts that would benefit Moro communities in villages located inside their strongholds.

Hataman told Al-Barka residents and local MILF forces that the HELPS convergence concept calls for the involvement of all agencies of government in the delivery of services in selected, “needy” areas in the five provinces of ARMM.

The regional government has initially identified 30 towns as “priority target areas” for the HELPS project.

The HELPS project, according to Hataman, will be initiated as a pilot effort in six towns each in Maguindanao, Basilan, Sulu and Tawi-Tawi, and eight municipalities in Lanao del Sur, which is the region’s largest province.

John Magno, Hataman’s chief-of-staff, said the health package of the HELPS project includes the construction of health centers and birthing clinics with complete facilities, provision of supplies and medicines for local sectors, and the deployment of health personnel that can serve communities on a round-the-clock basis.

The project also aims to establish more day care centers for pre-school children and feeding centers, and to provide needed instructional materials to regular public schools and existing Madrasahs, or Arabic learning institutions in target areas, according to Magno.

“We are grateful to the officials of ARMM and the provincial government of Basilan for extending this kind of project to Al-Barka,” Asnawi said in Filipino.

Asnawi said they also appreciate the efforts of President Benigno Aquino III to conclude the government’s peace talks with the MILF before his term ends in 2016.

The ARMM and MILF’s joint launching of the HELPS project in the rebel-controlled Barangay Cambug, home to about a thousand rebels, preceded the similar ceremonial rites in Basilan’s Tabuan-Lasa town and in the city of Lamitan, the capital of the island province.

Hataman and representatives of the provincial government distributed farming and fishery equipment, medical supplies and food rations to local residents during the HELPS project launching in Tabuan-Lasa and Lamitan City. - John Unson