Mindanao flooding victims get aid

COTABATO CITY, Philippines - Relief workers are taking advantage of the dry weather since Sunday to deliver relief supplies to low-lying areas in Central Mindanao, now underwater after big rivers and marshes in the region swelled due to heavy rains last week.

The Maguindanao provincial board, chaired by Vice Gov. Lester Sinsuat, declared the province under state of calamity during a special session last Thursday to hasten the release of funds for relief and rehabilitation works in flooded areas.

Maguindanao Gov. Esmael Mangudadatu said the provincial government on Monday dispatched relief workers to Kabuntalan town in the first district of the province, equipped with rubber boats, to deliver food rations to inundated farming enclaves.

He said relief works will also be extended to nearby low-lying towns in the first district of Maguindanao starting Tuesday.

“What we are so worried about is the effect of the floods to the productivity of our farming communities. Big tracts of lands with ready-to-harvest crops have been inundated. We are still validating the extent of the damages to agriculture this calamity has caused,” Mangudadatu said.

Two senior provincial board members, Asnawi Sinsuat Limbona and Bobby Katambak, had separately confirmed Maguindanao's having declared under state of calamity, via a resolution unanimously approved to hasten the relief efforts of Mangudadatu's office.

Chief provincial budget officer Lynette Estandarte, spearheading the initial relief mission to Kabuntalan and surrounding towns, has earmarked the initial dispersal of three tons of food supplies to affected families.  

Estandarte said they will expand their relief missions to flooded towns in the upper Maguindanao delta, which connects to the 220,000-hectare Liguasan Marsh, the “catch basin” of large rivers that spring from watersheds in surrounding hinterlands in Bukidnon, North Cotabato, South Cotabato, and Sultan Kudarat.

The Humanitarian Emergency Assistance and Relief Team (HEART) of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) has distributed seven truckloads of food supplies to flooded barangays in Maguindanao’s Kabuntalan, Northern Kabuntalan, Sultan sa Barongis, Mamasapano, and Datu Abdullah Sangki towns in continuing relief operations that began on Friday.

The HEART, operating under the joint supervision of ARMM Gov. Mujiv Hataman and Regional Executive Secretary Laisa Alamia, aims to complete its relief works in the province before the coming weekend.

The HEART still has more than five tons of relief goods ready for distribution to far-flung areas in the province.