Badjaos in Cotabato City get Ramadhan treat

COTABATO City - Mendicant Badjaos roaming the city streets for food and money never felt they are important until Muslim officials gave them a “special treat” in keeping with the spiritual tenets of Ramadhan.

Close to 300 Badjaos, also known “Samah Dilaut” people, were fed and given free medical exams on Wednesday night by officials of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao led by regional Governor Mujiv Hataman.

The project was organized by Hataman’s office and members of the regional cabinet including Social Welfare Secretary Haroun Al-Rashid Lucman, Health Secretary Kadil Sinolinding Jr. and Education Secretary Jamar Kulayan.

The ARMM's Bureau of Madaris Education, and other support offices, including the Regional Ports Management Authority and the Bureau of Cultural Heritage, both under the Office of the Regional Governor, also helped facilitate the gift-giving event.

“This gesture of ARMM officials gave us hope and made us realize that we are important to them too,” 26-year-old Radjah Tagay told reporters in the vernacular.

Khais Paiyima, 16, said the banquet hosted by ARMM officials for them inside the 32-hectare regional government center in Cotabato City was something new to the city's Badjao community, beset by grinding poverty, disease and illiteracy.

Physicians from the regional Department of Health treated dozens of Badjaos afflicted with various ailments while others feasted on food and drinks served by regional officials.

“We are happy with the gifts of food and medical attention given to us,” a 14-year-old beggar, Rumaya Tanjili, said in the native dialect.

The DOH-ARMM provided the sick Badjaos with free medicines and multi-vitamins too.

Badjaos are supposedly sea dwellers, but forced to live in cities, where they survive on mendicancy, owing to lack of livelihood opportunities in seaside enclaves and the absence of government interventions needed to improve their productivity.

“This activity is our way of making these people feel that even if they are in Cotabato City, they are still part of the ARMM’s ethnic communities,” Hataman said.

Cotabato City, which is the political capital of the autonomous region, is under Administrative Region 12.

“This activity is in keeping with the tenets of charity and universal love, which are among the acts of piety being espoused in the real spiritual context of the Ramadhan fasting month,” Hataman said.

Most members of the Badjao community reside in a squalid, abandoned riverside warehouse at the west of the city.

Some of them are observing the Ramadhan too, which is one of the “five pillars” of the Islamic faith, which include belief in Allah, praying five times a day facing the direction of Saudi Arabia, giving of zakat (alms) to the poor, and pilgrimage to Makkah at least once in a lifetime for those who can afford the cost of travel. 

Muslims fast from dawn to dusk and focus on good deeds and reparations for wrongdoings during the Ramadhan atonement season, which lasts for one lunar cycle, or about 28-29 days.

This year’s Ramadhan started on June 29 and is due to culminate anytime between July 27 to 29, depending on the sighting by scholars of the new moon to mark the start of the month of Shawwal in the Islamic Hijrah calendar.