ARMM launches 'roads to peace' for Moro peasants

MAGUINDANAO, Philippines - Officials on Thursday launched two multi-million “roads to peace” projects to connect Moro peasants to trading centers where they sell their farm products.

Governor Mujiv Hataman of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) and his public works secretary, Hadji Emil Sadain, led the separate launching of the projects, the 5 kilometer, P70-million Mercedes-Buldon-Barira road, and the P70-million Marader-Talayan Poblacion road in Maguindanao’s Barira and Talayan towns, respectively.

The groundbreaking rite for the two projects was preceded by Hataman's ceremonial release of equipment and capital assistance to seven farmers’ cooperatives that are recipients of various projects under the ARMM’s Health-Education-Livelihood-Protection Synergy Program.

The turnover of checks and equipment to officials of seven cooperatives was witnessed by ARMM Vice Governor Haroun Al-Rashid Lucman, Regional Executive Secretary Laisa Alamia and Makmod Mending Jr., the region's agriculture and fisheries secretary.

Sadain said the Barira road project will be bankrolled with an allocation from the ARMM’s infrastructure budget while the artery that would connect Talayan’s town center to Barangay Marader shall be funded jointly by the regional government and the Payapa at Masaganang Pamayanan Program of the Office of the Presidential Adviser on the Peace Process.

The 5-kilometer concrete road project in Tayalan will interconnect more than a dozen agricultural enclaves where members of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) and the Moro National Liberation Front dwell.

Maguindanao's appointed deputy governor, Ramil Dilangalen, said the presiding chair of the provincial peace and order council, Governor Esmael Mangudadatu, had asked the Army's 603rd Brigade and local MILF commanders to help each other secure workers involved in the "roads to peace" projects.

“This is a big help to our efforts to improve the lives of our constituents in areas that were scenes of bloody conflicts in the past,” Talayan’s former mayor, Hadji Ali Midtimbang, told reporters.

Midtimbang, the traditional "grand datu" of Talayan, said they are also thankful to the Office of the Presidential Adviser for the Peace Process for helping put up a five-kilometer concrete road designed to hasten the mobility of local Moro peasants.

Hataman said the two road projects could be completed possibly from between December this year to February 2015.

“The two recipient local government units have adequate road-building equipment needed for the concreting of these two roads,” Hataman told reporters.

The two projects are among more than a hundred which the regional government launched in recent months.

Sadain said the program of works and funding details for the two projects are open to scrutiny by the media and local civil society organizations.