Farmers continue to benefit from WB-funded dryer project

MAGUINDANAO, Philippines – There are two new solar dryers in Barangay Madidis in Datu Paglas town in the province that are near mosques where farmers pray five times a day while their rice grains are being dried in the post-harvest facilities.

Ali Akbar Bangkala, president of the People’s Organization (PO) in Barangay Madidis, said the two solar dryers were built, along with a classroom, by local folks with the help of the World Bank and its conduit for its projects in Moro areas, the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao Social Fund Project (ASFP)

More than 80 percent of the Moro families in Barangay Madidis in the northeast of Datu Paglas town in the second district of Maguindanao rely on rice farming as main source of income.

“These solar dryers that we constructed are now helping us improve our production of rice grains. We have them right in our barangay and we don’t need to dry our grains in commercial dryers anymore,” Bangkala said in Filipino.

The World Bank, which has been helping put up socio-economic projects in the ARMM through the ASFP for more than a decade now, has dozens of similar projects in selected underdeveloped areas in the autonomous region.

Experts from World Bank had rated  as “satisfactory” the implementation of its projects in the ARMM.

The World Bank-assisted projects of ASFP are being implemented by local sectors the “bayanihan way” with the support of their local government units.

Barangay Madidis was named after the Madidis clan in the area, whose leaders had governed the community, from one generation to another, even before the barangay was established as a political unit under the municipal government of Datu Paglas.

Ebrahim Madidis, who is the barangay chairman, said what is good about the solar dryer projects and classroom the ASFP and the World Bank helped put up in the community are near mosques where Muslim farmers perform their obligatory prayers.

“From their farms, they go to the solar dryers and during prayer time they go to the mosques nearby to pray,” Madidis said.

Madidis added that grade school pupils and high schools students from surrounding schools also use them as makeshift basketball and volleyball courts when farmers do not dry rice grains.

“Because of their sports activities, they stay away  from bad influences such as use of illegal drugs. After playing out there, they go to the mosques near the solar dryers to pray,” Madidis said.  - John Unson