Widows of Moro guerillas get P50K each from government

COTABATO CITY – Two hundred widows of Moro guerillas who perished in fighting for regional autonomy received P50,000 cash each as initial livelihood grants from the Bangsamoro government in payouts Thursday in Cotabato province.

Local executives in Cotabato province, among them Gov. Emmylou Taliño Mendoza, separately told reporters Saturday they were elated with the Bangsamoro government’s having provided the 200 widows with cash assistance they can use for income-generating projects in the agricultural enclaves where they reside.

The symbolic release of the monetary support to the 200 widows, who gathered in Barangay Manarapan in Carmen town in Cotabato, was facilitated by officials of the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao led by Regional Local Government Minister Naguib Sinarimbo.

The 200 beneficiaries of the livelihood assistance are from Bangsamoro barangays in Cotabato’s adjoining Kabacan and Carmen towns, where state forces and secessionist Moro groups figured in deadly encounters during the 1970s until the early 1990s.

A mother of four children, Zukria Abas, whose husband, Samsudin, died in an encounter with soldiers in 2014 in Pikit town in Cotabato, said she will use the P50,000 cash from the Ministry of the Interior and Local Government-BARMM for a small-scale rice and corn trading business in their barangay.

“I will tell my mother to use the money she received as down payment for a motorcycle for a tricycle I can drive around to earn money during non-school days,” said Madzid Sandiale, a 21-year-old college student, who lost his father, Tangan, in a clash with soldiers in Pagalungan town Maguindanao del Sur in 2003.

Sinarimbo had told the widows that the BARMM, a product of 22 years of peace talks between Malacañang and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, recognizes how their spouses had fought for the creation of the Bangsamoro government that Malacañang and the MILF established in 2019 to serve the Moro communities.

There are 63 barangays in different towns in Cotabato province, which is under Administrative Region 12, that became part of the BARMM core territory via a plebiscite in 2019.

“We are happy that the Bangsamoro government is doing its best to make these 63 barangays become progressive. These barangays are no longer under Region 12 but my administration supports BARMM’s peace and development initiatives for its residents,” Cotabato Gov. Emmylou Taliño-Mendoza said Saturday.

Mendoza, chairperson of the influential multi-sector Regional Development Council 12 that covers four provinces and four cities in Region 12, said she and her constituent-mayors have continued extending basic services to residents of the 63 Bangsamoro barangays despite their being under the BARMM government now.

“These 63 barangays are inside municipalities that are under Cotabato province in Region 12. We are here to help BARMM make peace and progress spread in these barangays,” said Midsayap Mayor Rolly Sacdalan, who, like Mendoza, is also a staunch supporter of the joint government-MILF peace efforts.