Floods dislocate 45,000 Maguindanao villagers

MAGUINDANAO, Philippines - Floodwaters spawned by incessant rains since Sunday dawn inundated 18 towns in the province overnight, dislocating 45,594 villagers and damaging more than P50-million worth of rice and corn crops.

Officials of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao said the number of evacuees could increase in the next 24 hours due to the continuing rains in surrounding hinterlands where rivers flow downstream into the 220,000-hectare Liguasan Delta which spreads through low-lying areas in Maguindanao.

ARMM Gov. Mujiv Hataman led Monday the distribution of 10 tons of relief supplies to the flooded towns of Sultan Kudarat and Kabuntalan, both in the first district of Maguindanao.

Hataman said he has asked the ARMM police and the Army’s 6th Infantry Division to help monitor the water level of big rivers in Maguindanao and help evacuate people in riverside villages if they overflow.

Maguindanao is the geographical “catch basin” of water flowing from the Liguasan Marsh, the Rio Grande de Mindanao from the North, and the Allah River from the forested hinterlands of South Cotabato.

Maguindanao, in fact, means “people of the flooded plains” in the local vernacular.

Hataman said he has designated ARMM Vice-Gov. Haroun Al-Rashid Lucman, who is the concurrent social welfare chief of the region, and Regional Health Secretary Kadil Sinolinding Jr., to lead the delivery of relief services to flooded areas in far-flung towns in the province. - John Unson