Foreign help for seaside 'peace road' project sought

COTABATO CITY — Residents of the now progressing fishing capital of Maguindanao del Norte need help from foreign donors in building bridges over rivers at stretches of a road now being constructed to connect their town to Sultan Kudarat province.

The bridges are eyed to sustain the booming economy in the area.

The neighboring Maguindanao del Norte and Sultan Kudarat are component provinces of the Bangsamoro region and Administrative Region 12, respectively.

Traditional Moro and Teduray leaders and barangay officials in the now 14-year seaside Datu Blah Sinsuat town in Maguindanao del Norte separately told reporters on Tuesday that they are wishing that foreign benefactors, like member-states of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation or OIC and wealthy European countries funding humanitarian projects in Mindanao can support the ongoing construction by their local government unit of a 100-kilometer coastal road that would link their barangays to Lebak town in Sultan Kudarat.

The mayor of Datu Blah Sinsuat, Marshal Sinsuat, said on Tuesday that they will appreciate foreign support to hasten their construction of bridges and the road, to traverse and connect their 13 beachfront barangays to Lebak, an old trading center and home to mixed Muslim and non-Muslim settlers.

“This road project, once completed, will boost the mobility of our people who deliver their farm-products and daily catch of fishes from the territorial seas of our municipality to Cotabato City, the capital of BARMM,” Sinsuat said.

Local officials have named the 100-kilometer Datu Blah Sinsuat-Lebak overland arterial network now being built as “peace road,” certain of its positive impact on peacebuilding activities of community elders in both towns and to local commerce and trade. Datu Blah Sinsuat is more known now as the new investment hub of Maguindanao del Norte, one of the six provinces in the Bangsamoro region.

The OIC, whose member-states include petroleum-exporting countries in the Middle East and North Africa, helped broker the Sept. 2, 1996 peace agreement between the government and the Moro National Liberation Front. 

It also helped craft  the 2014 Comprehensive Agreement on Bangsamoro that paved the way for the creation in early 2019 of the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, whose chief minister is Ahod Balawag Ebrahim, chairman of the MILF’s central committee.

Wealthy countries in Europe have ongoing projects in Mindanao complementing the peace process aiming to put closure to decades of secessionist strife in the region via socio-economic interventions and governance by the local communities.