COTABATO CITY, Philippines — Members of the business community in the Bangsamoro region were elated with the transfer to Lamitan City of the regional labor ministry’s field office in Basilan from a city about 30 kilometers away.
Lamitan City, which has 45 barangays, is touted as the new investment hub in Basilan, which has 11 towns and another city, Isabela, which is under Administrative Region 9.
Radio reports in Cotabato City on Saturday morning, January 18, stated that Mayor Roderick Furigay, employees of the Ministry of Labor and Employment-Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao and their minister, Muslimin Sema, and Gov. Hadjiman Salliman cooperated in the transfer of MoLE-BARMM’s Basilan office in Barangay Limook in Lamitan City from Isabela City.
“That augurs well with the efforts of the business sector in BARMM to boost the investment climate in Lamitan City, a promising, potential site for capital intensive agricultural projects,” the lawyer-entrepreneur Ronald Hallid Torres, chairman of the Bangsamoro Business Council, told reporters on Saturday morning.
The office of Sema and Furigay, who is seeking reelection as Lamitan City mayor unopposed, have common projects meant to empower the city’s labor sector and stop employment of children as workers.
The two officials and Salliman, now in is third and last term as Basilan governor, separately told reporters that among the sectors that stand to benefit from the pro-labor programs of the MoLE-BARMM, the Basilan government and Lamitan City mayor’s office are former members of the Abu Sayyaf who have returned to the fold of law, now thriving as farm workers and fishermen in different towns in the island province.
“We are glad with the relocation of the ministry’s provincial office from the Isabela City to Lamitan City, whose local government unit had garnered in the past eight years seven Seal of Good Local Governance Award, which we call SGLG award, from the central office of the Department of the Interior and Local Government,” Mohammad Omar Pasigan, chairman of the Bangsamoro Board of Investments, said on Saturday.