Maguindanao market gets P5-M improvement

MAGUINDANAO, Philippines - Officials launched Tuesday a P5-million market improvement project in the bastion of the indigenous people in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao in line with the commemoration of the first EDSA revolution.

The improvement of the public market of Upi town, located in the first district of Maguindanao, is funded out of the Special Purpose Fund of the office of ARMM Gov. Mujiv Hataman.

Hataman and Upi Mayor Ramon Piang, Jr. jointly led the ceremonial groundbreaking for the market project, before leaders of the indigenous ethnic Teduray communities.

The event was also witnessed by local Moro residents from different areas in Upi, known homeland of ARMM’s non-Moro Teduray people.

Hataman said the project is a special “EDSA spirit cooperation venture” of the ARMM government and office of Piang, who is an ethnic Teduray chieftain.

Hataman said the project is meant to hasten the socio-economic empowerment of the indigenous people (IP) in Upi, the fastest rising municipality in ARMM in terms of socio-economic, and political development.

Hataman was accompanied to Upi by lawyer Kirby Abdullah, who is helping oversee the ARMM's inter-agency Humanitarian Emergency Action and Relief Team, and the region's natural resources secretary, Kahal Kedtag.

“This market project is also intended to bring to the consciousness of the IPs and Moro sectors in this municipality the importance of the `EDSA I’ solidarity context. Unity and cooperation will help accelerate the socio-economic growth of this area,” Hataman said.

Piang said the local communities are grateful to the ARMM government for its generosity in providing Upi with projects and other interventions needed to improve the socio-economic condition in its more than 20 barangays.

Piang, a former member of the government’s peace panel negotiating with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, helped craft the power-sharing annex to the Oct. 15, 2012 Framework Agreement on Bangsamoro.

Piang and Hataman, in a brief meeting before the launching of the market project, agreed to embark on more dialogues among Maguindanao’s IP sectors, and the GPH and MILF panels to allay apprehensions about possible political marginalization of non-Moro groups under a Bangsamoro political entity.

“We shall exhaust everything to ensure that the IPs in the autonomous region will not be left out in the peace process. The government and MILF had already assured no such thing will ever happen,” Hataman said.