Cotabato traders bewail security woes

COTABATO CITY — Businessmen in Central Mindanao are bracing for what they fear will be an irreversible slump in the city’s already moribund economy due to the breakdown in the region’s peace and order.

Oscar Tan-Abing, a key official of the Filipino-Chinese Chamber of Commerce here, said local traders are confronted with two choices now: either to relocate elsewhere where their investments are safe, or continue operating here despite the risks, including possible bankruptcy.

Tension has gripped this city of 37 barangays since January due to a kidnapping scare and the seemingly unending cycle of violence, including bomb attacks and killings by suspected guns-for-hire, even in busy places.

Police, which lack manpower, communications equipment and vehicles, still face a blank wall on the violent incidents.

Last Thursday, soldiers thwarted an attempt by members of the Pentagon kidnap-for-ransom gang to snatch another medical practitioner here.

The foiled abduction of the physician came just two weeks after the release of Dr. Rosemarie Agustin, whom the Pentagon gang had held captive for almost a month until it was reportedly paid a P3-million ransom.

"The business climate in Cotabato City now is not good. Security problems have worsened the situation," said Tan-Abing in an interview with Catholic radio station dxMS here.

Various sectors earlier called on President Arroyo to augment the city’s police personnel to complement the peacekeeping efforts of the city government.

"But it seems that President Arroyo has ignored our appeal. Malacañang should do something immediately. We are taxpayers and we have been religiously paying our taxes," a surgeon here lamented.

Antonio Santos, who belongs to the Metro Cotabato Chamber of Commerce and Industry, said local businessmen have no choice but to lay off workers due to heavy losses.

"Because of peace and order problems, we cannot expand our operations and inject additional capital because it would be a gamble on our part," Santos said.

Col. Essel Soriano, commander of the anti-kidnapping Task Force Cotabato, said they have been tightly monitoring the city’s entry and exit points for weeks.

"But curbing kidnapping activities in the city can only be done if all sectors will cooperate and help authorities neutralize kidnappers. All sectors need to be very vigilant, too," Soriano said.

Since 1990, there has never been a lull in abductions here and in the rest of Central Mindanao.

Apart from kidnappers, big extortion rings have also been preying on businessmen in the region.

The city’s economy has not even fully recovered from the hostilities between military and Moro rebel forces which displaced hundreds of thousands of villagers in many flashpoint areas in the region two years ago.

"The police and the military must focus their attention now on our peace and order problems before businessmen start pulling out and leave the local economy beyond repair," said a 53-year-old Muslim religious leader, who asked not to be identified.