COTABATO CITY, Philippines - A territorial issue has prevented the city’s fire bureau, nor its counterpart in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao to conduct a fire safety inspection of the billions worth of buildings inside the ARMM compound here in years.
The 32-hectare ARMM compound is located at the northeastern part of Cotabato City, which is component area of Administrative Region 12.
The city’s fire department is also under the Bureau of Fire Protection in Region 12.
The BFP-ARMM has a fire station, equipped with a small fire truck and manned by a team, watching over some 50 buildings inside the sprawling regional government compound.
Officials only realized the constraint after an accidental fire last Tuesday gutted the supply storage facility of the regional health department not far from the office of ARMM Gov. Mujiv Hataman.
Major Adam Guiamad, Cotabato City’s fire marshal, had announced over station dxMS here morning of Thursday that the fire that hit one of the buildings of the ARMM’s Department of Health was accidental, based on initial findings of two investigators dispatched to the scene.
ARMM officials said there has never been any fire safety inspection of any of the buildings housing different government offices in the regional government compound in the past ten years.
ARMM Gov. Mujiv Hataman organized last Wednesday a special team, led by Regional Executive Secretary Laisa Alamia to investigate on the fire that hit a building in the compound.
Alamia told reporters, during a press briefing Thursday, that they are to recommend the archiving, in fire proof enclosures, of important documents in all offices of ARMM line agencies and support entities as protection from fires or other disasters.
Hataman said he has directed his public works secretary, Engineer Emil Sadain, and the Regional fire bureau to link up with the office of Guiamad for a massive, immediate joint fire safety inspection of all buildings in the compound.
The security landscape of the 32-hectare compound is also unique. It is guarded by a team of policemen from the ARMM’s regional police command in Camp S.K. Pendatun in Parang town in the northwest of Maguindanao, not by members of the Cotabato City police office, whose regional headquarters are in Gen. Santos City in the far south.