BARMM mulls infra projects for 63 North Cotabato barangays

COTABATO CITY, Philippines — Residents of 63 barangays in North Cotabato now under the Bangsamoro region stand to benefit from multi-million 2021 infrastructure projects now on drafting tables of regional engineers.

North Cotabato Gov. Nancy Catamco said Thursday she is thankful to the commitment of the Ministry of Public Works-Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao to build road networks to interconnect the 63 barangays to domestic trading centers, to schools and to medical dispensaries.

Voters in the 63 barangays in North Cotabato, a component-province of Administrative Region 12, voted in favor of the inclusion of their villages into the core territory of BARMM during a plebiscite in January 2019.

Catamco said she received on Monday a report that MPW-BARMM engineers held last February 4 an initial meeting with the Bangsamoro government’s designated governance coordinator for the 63 barangays, incumbent North Cotabato provincial board member Kelly Antao, to discuss essential infrastructure projects.

Bangsamoro Public Works Minister Eduard Guerra said Thursday the brainstorming sessions would soon be expanded, to also involve representatives from the 63 barangay governments.

“Our initial goal is to identify needed road projects via consensus building. We shall coordinate all our efforts with the office of Gov. Catamco because these 63 barangays are inside municipalities under her watch as provincial governor,” Guerra said.

Catamco had earlier said she will continue to extend economic and humanitarian interventions for residents of the 63 barangays that are now component-barangays of the Bangsamoro region.

“Their having become part of BARMM is not an absolute separation from the province. My administration and the BARMM government can cooperate on peace and development initiatives for the communities in these areas.