5,000 Cotabato residents receive DSWD 'anti-crisis' grants

COTABATO CITY— At least 5,000 residents of Cotabato province received P16 million worth government poverty alleviation assistance in separate symbolic cash handout rites on Sunday.

Two thousand of them are agriculture students in a state university.

The release of the Assistance to Individuals in Crisis Situation, or AICS, from the Department of Social Welfare and Development to students of the University of Southern Mindanao and to 3,000 marginalized Moro families in Carmen and Kabacan towns was facilitated by Gov. Emmylou Mendoza, Rep. Samantha Santos (Cotabato, 3rd District), DSWD 12 regional director Loreto Cabaya, Jr. and Sen. Imee Marcos.

Cabaya and Mendoza, chairperson of the inter-agency, multi-sector Regional Development Council 12, separately told reporters on Monday that the agriculture students in the USM in Kabacan, who received P5,000 of AICS grant each, are from families relying mainly on farming and fishing as primary sources of income.

Meanwhile, at the USM campus, Marcos urged the students who received AICS grants to study hard and support the government’s Southern Mindanao peace process and the activities of local government units complementing the initiative.

Cabaya, Mendoza, Santos and Marcos also turned over P10 million worth of AICS assistance to 3,000 underprivileged Moro families from interior barangays in the adjoining Carmen and Kabacan towns in the third congressional district of Cotabato.

Mendoza said that she is thankful to Marcos for her participation in the release of the AICS support to residents of Cotabato, a component province of Administrative Region 12.

Many of the impoverished families that received the AICS financial support are identified with the Moro National Liberation Front and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front that have separate peace agreements with the national government and whose leaders are together managing the regional government of the now four-year Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao.

Mendoza and Cabaya, both born and raised in Cotabato province, are known staunch supporters of the Malacañang’s separate peace overture with the MILF and the MNLF.

“This anti-crisis intervention has a big effect on our constituents here,” Marcos pointed out in a brief talk with Moro villagers in the municipal center of Carmen, home to mixed Muslim, Christian and non-Moro indigenous communities.

Mendoza assured the senator of her administration’s support to efforts of the national government to put closure, via socio-economic and political interventions, to the Moro issue hounding Mindanao for decades now.