COTABATO CITY, Philippines - Officials highlighted Tuesday’s 23rd anniversary of Malacañang’s devolution of the public works department to the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) with a symbolic launching of the agency’s management information systems (MIS) office here.
The ARMM’s public works secretary, engineer Hadji Emil Sadain, said their MIS office will help ensure utmost transparency on all of the department’s activities and infrastructure programs.
The Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH)-ARMM now boasts of having evolved from the region’s being second most corrupt entity to the regional government’s most open to the media and sectors seeking access to its financial records and bank deposits.
The DPWH-ARMM saved close to P200 million worth of unspent operation funds and project grants from the national government in recent months.
The region’s Department of Education (DepEd) was tagged as ARMM’s most corrupt agency under past administrations.
The DepEd-ARMM also generated P800 million worth of savings the past two years due to the stringent handling of its coffer by Gov. Mujiv Hataman and Regional Education Secretary Jamar Kulayan.
Sadain and Hataman led Monday’s groundbreaking rite for the construction of the MIS office, to be built beside the department’s regional office inside the region's 32-hectare administrative center.
Hataman said that among the pioneering works the MIS office will initiate is the expanded ARMM road mapping project, which is needed to hasten the economic thrusts of the region and its constituent-municipal and provincial governments.
The groundbreaking rite was witnessed by the chief engineers of the eight engineering district offices in the autonomous region, which covers Maguindanao and Lanao del Sur, which are both in mainland Mindanao, the island provinces of Basilan, Sulu and Tawi-Tawi, and the cities of Marawi and Lamitan.
Sadain said the MIS office will be open to journalists, representatives of civil society organizations, and leaders of Moro revolutionary fronts wishing to look into official records pertaining to projects and activities of the department.
“Its doors shall be wide open to all sectors that want to see how we are handling the infrastructure projects of the ARMM government and how we spend the funds intended for these projects,†Hataman, for his part, said.