COTABATO CITY, Philippines - Officials on Tuesday awarded P139 million worth of contracts for the construction of 212 school buildings in Maguindanao and Lanao del Sur to address illiteracy in the two provinces.
Illiteracy is blamed for much of the socioeconomic woes and security problems in both provinces, known bastions of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front.
Governor Mujiv Hataman of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM), Regional Public Works Secretary Hadji Emil Sadain, and representatives of the construction firms, which gave the lowest quotations for each of the school buildings during a recent public bidding, signed the contracts Tuesday afternoon.
The symbolic contract awarding rite, held at the newly refurbished Office of the Regional Governor inside the 32-hectare ARMM compound in Cotabato City, was witnessed by regional officials, representatives of different civil society organizations and journalists.
The contracting firms, Brima Construction, Stoneline Construction, and the Hexamindz, will commence constructing the school buildings within this month, Sadain said.
Brima Construction will build 110 school buildings, worth P90.4 million, in Lanao del Sur.
The Stoneline Construction and the Hexamindz will construct 43, and 59 schools in Maguindanao, with P43.8 million, and P45.5 million allocation each, respectively.
The signing of the project contracts was preceded by the separate launching on Tuesday morning by Hataman, Sadain, and the ARMM’s agriculture secretary, Makmod Mending Jr., of road concreting projects in Maguindanao’s Buldon and Talayan towns.
The ARMM government also contracted on Tuesday the Hi-Tri Construction firm to facilitate the concreting of a vital road linking the town proper of Kabuntalan town, to Barangay Taviran in Datu Odin Sinsuat, both in the first district of Maguindanao.
Hataman and Sadain also signed a separate procurement contract, for P26.5 million-worth of road-building equipment, with the Tiger Motor Sales.
The ARMM’s Department of Public Works and Highways will utilize the equipment to hasten the rehabilitation of farm-to-market roads in the region.