Militiamen in Cotabato City moonlight as security guards

COTABATO CITY — City officials are urging the Armed Forces to initiate an immediate headcount of members of the Citizen Armed Forces Geographical Unit (CAFGU) here, now the subject of criticisms for failing to help the police and the military go after the Pentagon kidnapping syndicate.

Many of the city’s 162 CAFGU members, some of them issued with M-14 assault rifles, are employed as full-time security guards of business establishments here, thus depriving the city’s 37 barangays of local militiamen who can respond to security situations.

"And we don’t have any information if all of these 162 CAFGUs are still working, or if some of them have long died or are no longer in the service," Mayor Muslimin Sema said.

Last week, the city’s peace and order council passed a resolution urging the military to immediately evaluate the local CAFGU unit and determine if all of its 162 members are still capable of performing security functions.

Sema said some militiamen are possibly no longer on active duty, but have yet to be replaced.

Barangay officials said they could have prevented past kidnappings if the CAFGU members were only dutifully performing their peacekeeping functions.

Maj. Julieto Ando, spokesman of the Army’s 6th Infantry Division, said the CAFGU unit here is administratively under the Army’s Special Forces.

"But even then, we are ready to initiate measures to complement the initiative of the city government in making the CAFGU an efficient anti-kidnapping unit," Ando said.