Cotabato, Maguindanao rivers' water level rising

COTABATO CITY - Rescue teams have been closely monitoring the water levels at dozens of rivers criss-crossing the border of the city and Maguindanao province that have swelled due to heavy rains early this week.

Dozens of barangays in low-lying areas in Maguindanao, which has swamps and marshes connecting to the 220,000-hectare Liguasan Delta, the world’s largest, are in danger of getting inundated if the rains will continue, according to officials of the provincial disaster mitigation council.

An inter-agency group, comprised of police officials, representatives of Mindanao’s media community, and officers of the Army’s 6th Infantry Division, and the 5th Special Forces Battalion, found out, during an on-site inspection on Friday that vast tracts of water hyacinths from the Liguasan Marsh have scattered on the surface of several rivers, blocking the downstream flow towards the Moro Gulf.

Maguindanao Gov. Esmael Mangudadatu said that several barangays in towns along the Liguasan Delta are now inundated, forcing villagers to relocate to higher grounds.

Mangudadatu said he had tasked his senior staff, Lynette Estandarte, chief provincial budget officer, to validate the extent of the reported evacuations and to provide the displaced folks with relief support and other vital interventions.

Col. Dickson Hermoso, spokesman of the Army’s 6th Infantry Division, said Army units guarding riverside peasant enclaves have been ordered to immediately relocate villagers once large rivers in Maguindanao overflow.

Laisa Alamia, regional executive secretary of ARMM, said the regional government’s Humanitarian Emergency Assistance and Relief Team (HEART) is ready to respond to any emergency.

The HEART, composed of relief and rescue workers from different agencies of ARMM, is operating under the joint supervision of Alamia and Gov. Mujiv Hataman, who is the region’s chief executive.

Alamia said they are worried of the continuing compression of large chunks of water hyacinths on the surface of the downstream channels of rivers that cuts through the border of Maguindanao and Cotabato City, before draining at the Moro Gulf in the west of the two adjoining areas.

More than a hundred barangays in Cotabato City, in Maguindanao, and in North Cotabato were flooded in 2008 and, subsequently, in 2011 when vast chunks of aquatic plants blocked waterways, causing them to overflow, inundating riverside villages.

“We’re doing everything to prevent a repeat of those calamities,” Alamia said.