BARMM gets more vaccines, foreign rice donation

COTABATO CITY, Philippines — Residents of the Bangsamoro region are to have two premiums — six million doses of anti-coronavirus vaccines and P162 million worth of rice donated by Japan — that they so need.

Presidential Peace Adviser Carlito Galvez Jr., who is overseeing the government’s anti-COVID-19 vaccination program, announced Thursday that they are allocating six million doses of Johnson and Johnson anti-COVID-19 vaccines for the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao.

The region was reported to have low vaccination turnout since the rollout started early this year due to hesitancy among residents in far-flung areas.

BARMM Local Government Minister Naguib Sinarimbo said Saturday the regional government is thankful to Galvez for committing to supply the Bangsamoro region with six million doses of Johnson and Johnson vaccines.

Local executives in Basilan, among them Gov. Jim Salliman, have urged constituents to ignore fallacies about COVID-19 vaccines being spread by skeptics and pessimists on social media.

Salliman, chairperson of the Basilan inter-agency provincial disaster risk reduction and management council, said Saturday the Islamic religious community in the province is helping correct wrong notions about COVID-19 vaccines.

Salliman said he is optimistic that the BARMM government will provide Basilan with some doses of the Johnson and Johnson vaccines that Galvez committed to supply to the Bangsamoro region.

He said the BARMM health ministry and his office are closely working together in addressing pandemic issues besetting the island province of Basilan.

North Cotabato Vice Gov. Emmylou Taliño-Mendoza said Saturday she is certain that residents of the 63 Bangsamoro barangays in her province are to benefit too from the six million anti-COVID-19 doses from the office of Galvez.

“It is good news for the residents of the 63 Bangsamoro barangays in our province,” Mendoza.

Residents of the 63 barangays in different North Cotabato towns voted in favor of the inclusion of their villages into BARMM’s core territory during a plebiscite in 2019.

Mendoza and Salliman have separately called on their respective constituents to listen only to insights on the benefits of anti-COVID-19 vaccines from medical frontliners and to disregard reckless netizens spreading fake news about supposedly beneficial jabs.  

Besides the six million more doses of anti-COVID-19 vaccines from the national government, the Bangsamoro region also stands to benefit from a multi-million rice support package from Japan via the World Food Programme of the United Nations.

Japan has donated P162 million worth of rice to the Bangsamoro region via the WFP.

In a statement Friday, the WFP said the rice donation is intended for farmers, fishermen and former Moro guerillas covered by the joint peace efforts of Malacañang and the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao.

The rice supply is earmarked for residents of BARMM’s adjoining Lanao del Sur and Maguindanao provinces.

Sinarimbo said the Bangsamoro government is grateful to the Japanese government and the WFP for the rice dispersal program.

“We are thankful to Japan and the World Food Program for this initiative,” Sinarimbo, regional spokesperson, said.

The WFP said Japan’s rice support program was formalized Wednesday via an agreement forged by Japanese Ambassador Koshikawa Kazuhiko and Brenda Barton, who is WFP’s representative to the Philippines. 

The symbolic rite was held at the central office of the Department of Foreign Affairs in Metro Manila.

The event was witnessed by Galvez, Acting DFA Secretary Ma. Theresa Lazaro and BARMM’s deputy agriculture minister, Ammal Solaiman.

Japan, through the donation agreement, will provide BARMM, through WFP, 1,778 metric tons of rice.