Moro villagers learn livelihood skills, receive capital support

COTABATO CITY— More than a hundred marginalized residents, including former Moro rebels from various barangays in the Moro-dominated Special Geographic Area of Cotabato province, each received an additional P20,000 livelihood grant following last week’s workshops on practical farming and fishpond management.

The Special Geographic Area (SGA) covers 63 barangays under the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, but are inside Cotabato province in Administrative Region 12. Many of the 63 SGA barangays are near the 220,000-hectare Ligawasan Delta, the main source of freshwater fishes sold in markets in Central Mindanao.

A total of 104 residents from the newly created towns of Nabalawag, Kapalawan, and Pahamuddin—covering barangays in the SGA, participated in last week’s workshops facilitated by employees of the Ministry of Social Services and Development–Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao.

Local executives in Cotabato, among them Mayors Rolly Sacdalan and Evangeline Guzman of Midsayap and Kabacan, respectively, separately told reporters on Friday, July 18, that the workshops on integrated farming systems, pest control and inland fishpond operation for residents of the Bangsamoro towns in their province will benefit the constituents of their local government units too.

The MSSD-BARMM distributed P20,000 in cash to each of the 104 SGA residents who participated in the activities, providing them with initial capital for expanded backyard farming and fisheries projects.

“Among the participants to the workshops are residents of the Nabalawag municipality, a Bangsamoro municipality covering barangays originally under our municipality. Farmers there come to our town center to buy supplies for farming. They also buy food supplies in stores in our area and sell their farm products in markets around,” Sacdalan said.

Some of the barangays covered by Kapalawan were carved out from Kabacan, an old town in Cotabato, home to mixed Muslim and Christian communities. The Pahamuddin municipality has jurisdiction over barangays formerly under Pigcawayan in the first district of Cotabato. 

MSSD-BARMM officials told reporters on Friday that last week's workshops are part of the second phase of their ministry's Unlad Pamilyang Bangsamoro Program, a three-phased socio-economic venture meant to boost the productivity of poor villagers in the Bangsamoro region.

The SGA residents who joined the initial series of livelihood capacity-building orientation under the program had received P15,000 as the first tranche for income-generating projects and got P20,000 more after their more extensive follow-through sessions last week.

A participant in last week’s workshops, the 38-year-old Monica Mamalaguia, 38, said the capital input she got from the MSSD-BARMM had improved the agricultural productivity of her family.

She told reporters that she now has eight more goats, offspring of a pair that she procured using the P15,000 initial grant from the MSSD-BARMM.

Mamalaguia said her family had also regained control of their small agricultural land that they had pawned to a relative, paid using earnings from their backyard agricultural projects.

“We are thankful to the MSSD-BARMM for having reached out to us,” Mamalaguia said.