Maguindanao flood victims receive food packs

COTABATO CITY, Philippines - The Humanitarian Emergency Action and Response Team (HEART) of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) has distributed more than 6,000 food packs to flood victims in Maguindanao in continuing missions since Saturday.

The provincial board, chaired by Vice Gov. Lester Sinsuat, declared on June 19 the entire Maguindanao province under state of calamity following the inundation of 13 of its 36 towns due to torrential rains.

The ARMM-HEART, in its latest advisory, said relief workers from different agencies of the regional government already covered more than half of the 13 flooded towns, where they delivered more than 10 truckloads of food supplies to villagers.

Relief workers were in Datu Salibo town in the second district of Maguindanao Tuesday morning, dispersing food rations and attending to other needs of affected residents.

The office of Maguindanao Gov. Esmael Mangudadatu had also distributed five truckloads of relief supplies to flooded villages along big rivers straddling through the adjoining towns of Kabuntalan and Nothern Kabuntalan in the past two days, according to an emailed official communique.

The governor’s chief budget staff, Lynette Estandarte, said more relief supplies will be distributed to other flooded barangays in Maguindanao in the next seven days.

Estandarte said employees of the provincial governor’s office will also launch relief missions to riverside villages in the second district of the province.

Most of the flooded areas in Maguindanao are criss-crossed by rivers and dotted with swamps that connect to the 220,000-hectare Liguasan Marsh, the world’s largest in terms of surface area, located at the center of Central Mindanao.

The vast Liguasan Delta overflowed last week due to heavy downpours, causing the inundation of nearby towns in the adjoining provinces of Maguindanao, a component area of ARMM, and North Cotabato, which is under Administrative Region 12.