Basilan grateful for infra projects under PNoy watch

COTABATO CITY, Philippines - Basilan folks will thank on Monday President Benigno Aquino III for the infrastructure projects his political protégé, Gov. Mujiv Hataman of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM), implemented in the island province in the past four years.

Local officials, among them Vice Mayor Roderick Furigay of Lamitan City, on Friday confirmed to The STAR that Aquino will visit on Monday Barangay Tumahubong in Sumisip town west of the island province for a dialogue with community leaders.

“We will take advantage of his visit to express our gratitude for the national government’s having poured in big grants for infrastructure projects into the province through Gov. Hataman,” Furigay said.

Furigay said in Lamitan City alone, about a billion worth of projects had been implemented jointly by Hataman, his regional public works secretary, Don Arbison Loong, and Basilan District engineer Soler Undug from 2013 until December 2015.

“Many of our vital farm-to-market roads had been concreted. There is a multi-million water system project for Lamitan City and nearby towns now being implemented. More projects for 2016 are now in the pipeline,” Furigay said.

Hataman first got to the helm of the ARMM regional government as an appointed caretaker in December 2011.

He was elected as regional governor, the eight since ARMM’s creation via a referendum in 1990, during the region’s May 13, 2013 political exercise.

The barangay chairman of Tumahubong, Lajid Kotoh, said one of the most tangible bilateral projects of Malacañang and the Hataman administration in the province is the newly-concreted Basilan circumferential road.

A matrix obtained by The STAR from ARMM’s Department of Public Works and Highways indicated that the regional government had implemented 265 various “horizontal and vertical infrastructure projects” in Basilan from 2012 until early this year.

At least P9.35 billion worth of infrastructure grants had been poured into the island province during the period, the matrix stated.

“All of these projects were implemented in close coordination with the Commission on Audit and state auditors assigned to each of the 11 municipal government units in Basilan,” Loong said.

Loong said the implementation of the projects was monitored by representatives of the media and the office of the district engineer in the province using drone technology and satellite global positioning system.

Some of the projects were designed to hasten the restoration of normalcy in conflict-devastated peasant enclaves in Basilan, he added.

Hadja Nuriya Jamaldin, assistant superintendent of public schools in Basilan, said there were big increases in the number of enrollment in academic institutions in the 11 towns of Basilan in the past two years owing to the connectivity now of remote barangays to schools in the municipal centers and along the newly-concreted Basilan circumferential road.

“Education is the best means of fostering peace in the local communities. Education, complemented with proper religious formation, will bring us progress and development. Teachers in Basilan appreciate these projects deeply,” Jamaldin said.

Jamaldin said teachers will also thank Aquino for the construction of more school buildings and renovation of old ones by the Hataman administration in the past four years.