Tuburan Mayor Mauyag Papan—dayan said he immediately dispatched a team composed of his vice mayor and barangay officials to track down the abductors upon learning about the incident.
The three engineers, identified as Jennifer Bargarola, Scenio Polistico and Edwin Esguerra, were reportedly surveying an area for a cellular site when they were snatched in Tuburan.
The kidnappers, who have brought them to the hinterlands of Lanao del Sur, have reportedly demanded P7-million ransom for their release.
Papandayan clarified that Globe Telecom, which reportedly contracted the three engineers, was indeed planning to put up a cell site not in Tuburan but in adjoining Bayang town.
Brig. Gen. Francisco Gudani, chief of the 1st Marine Brigade and Task Force Ranao, earlier cited reports that losing candidates in the local elections could be behind the kidnapping.
Gudani believes the kidnappers were still keeping the three engineers in Lanao del Sur because the calls they made to negotiate the ransom were traced in the province.
He admitted though that the phone calls were possibly meant to mislead the authorities on their exact whereabouts.
Once their location is pinpointed, the military’s Southern Command said its men are ready to launch a rescue operation.
Meanwhile, operatives of the Army’s 6th Infantry Division arrested the other day a ranking leader of the Pentagon kidnap-for-ransom gang operating at the boundary of Cotabato City and Datu Odin Sinsuat, Maguindanao.
The suspect, Kalong Pened, long wanted for a string of offenses, including gun-running and drug trafficking, did not resist arrest when men of the 6th ID’s anti-kidnapping task force cordoned off his safehouse in Baulan district in Datu Odin Sinsuat, some 30 kilometers from Cotabato City.
Pened is a younger brother of Teng Salip Pened, a henchman of the Pentagon’s elusive leader, Tahir Alonto. — With John Unson