1,290 BARMM residents to receive microenterprise support

COTABATO CITY — More than a thousand poverty-stricken residents in five Bangsamoro provinces underwent financial literacy training last week in preparation for a microenterprise livelihood aid the government shall provide them each, officials said Monday.

Jidday Lucman, a senior public information staff of the Ministry of Social Services and Development-Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, told reporters Monday that the livelihood project will be implemented by the BARMM government and the central office of the Department of Social Welfare and Development.

Lucman said that among the 1,290 participants to their October 9 to 12 simultaneous literacy trainings in Maguindanao del Norte, Maguindanao del Sur, Basilan and Sulu are indigent residents from the 63 Bangsamoro barangays in different towns in Cotabato province under Region 12, now grouped together as the BARMM Special Geographic Area, or SGA.

The training was part of the national government’s Sustainable Livelihood Program, or SLP, for poor villagers in the Bangsamoro region.

"The training for those in Tawi-Tawi island municipalities will commence this week," Lucman said.

Lucman said that the 1,290 training participants, mostly wives of farmers and fishermen and widows of Moro Islamic Liberation Front members, would receive a P15,000 grant each from the central office of DSWD for viable microenterprise projects that they can venture in as extra sources of income.

Mayor Rolly Sacdalan of Midsayap town in Cotabato province, where there are SGA barangays under BARMM, said that he will task their municipal planners to help beneficiaries of the SLP in setting up income generating projects using the individual P15,000 grant as initial capital.

“These are the kind of projects that can improve the productivity of residents of barangays made poor by armed conflicts in the past. It can boost the peace process between the national government and the MILF,” Sacdalan, an entrepreneur-politician, said.

Basilan Gov. Jim Salliman said in an online message that he appreciates the DSWD’s continuing socio-economic interventions, through the MSSD-BARMM, for his marginalized constituents, even as functions of the department had fully been devolved to the Bangsamoro regional government in 2019.

Samra Alik, BARMM’s regional SLP coordinator, said that the P15,000 cash payout for each of the participants to the training will commence next week.

“This year, our target is to empower a total of 6,508 program participants across the region via this program,” Alik said.