Road project seen to boost commerce in coastal Maguindanao town

MAGUINDANAO, Philippines — Engineers are now constructing a road along the shoreline of a historic seaside town where Americans landed weapons for friendly Filipino forces during World War II.

 

Lawyer Ishak Mastura, chairman of the Regional Board of Investments-Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, said Wednesday that the highway project will bring prosperity to Datu Blah Sinsuat town once completed.

 

The 78.01-kilometer road project, costing P1.8 billion, will connect the western coast of Maguindanao, a component province of ARMM, to the coastal town of Lebak in Sultan Kudarat province in Region 12.

 

It was only in 2016 when the municipality of Datu Blah Sinsuat in the west coast of Maguindanao province got connected by overland arteries to Cotabato City and its immediate neighbors, Datu Odin Sinsuat and North Upi towns in Maguindanao.

 

People there relied only on boats to get to trading centers, schools and hospitals in central Mindanao.

 

The executive department of ARMM started constructing the 78.01 kilometer Tapian-Datu Blah-Lebak Highway more than a year ago.

 

Datu Blah Sinsuat Mayor Raida Tomawis-Sinsuat said Wednesday that the road, a stretch of which connects Barangay Tapian in Datu Odin Sinsuat to Barangay Matuber, has already started bringing in economic develpment.

 

The road project was started when the mayor’s spouse, Datu Marshall Sinsuat, was chief executive of the municipality.

 

Members of motorcycle clubs, mountain bikers and domestic tourists from Cotabato City, the administrative capital of ARMM, have lately been frequenting the scenic spots traversed by the finished portions of the highway.

 

Datu Blah Sinsuat was originally part of Maguindanao’s North Upi municipality, which has more than 30 barangays, 11 of them located along the Moro Gulf.

 

These 11 barangays were taken out from North Upi and grouped together under Datu Blah Sinsuat, created about a decade ago by the ARMM’s 24-member Regional Legislative Assembly.

 

The municipality was named after World War II guerrilla leader Datu Blah Sinsuat, who also served as congressman in the 1960s and, subsequently, as assemblyman in the Batasang Pambansa during the time of President Ferdinand Marcos.

 

There are stories by older folk in Datu Blah Sinsuat purporting how small boats of the then United States Armed Forces in the Far East clandestinely delivered thousands of assorted rifles to beaches there for dispersal to Moro guerilla groups in central Mindanao about a year before Philippines was liberated from Japanese occupation in 1945.

 

The town hall of Datu Blah Sinsuat is located at Barangay Pura, which the ARMM government already connected through a newly-opened road to North Upi via another artery that cuts through mountainous terrains.

 

The construction of the ARMM-sponsored P370-million, 21.7-kilometer North Upi-Datu Blah Sinsuat Highway was started ahead of the Datu Blah Sinsuat coastal highway project.

 

North Upi Mayor Ramon Piang said Wednesday the transport of marine products from Datu Blah Sinsuat is easier and faster now as a result of the construction of the upland road, now being concreted too.

 

Piang said the LGU of Datu Blah Sinsuat is helping ensure the completion of the road project by protecting construction workers and their heavy equipment.