Maguindanao graduates to march in evacuation centers

MAGUINDANAO, Philippines — Some 5,000 graduating elementary pupils and high school students are likely to hold graduation rites in different evacuation centers in Maguindanao starting next week, a regional education official said on Saturday.

John Magno, assistant secretary for operations of the Department of Education in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, said school heads in Maguindanao’s conflict-stricken Mamasapano, Sharif Saidona, Sharif Aguak, Salibo, Datu Saudi and Datu Unsay towns have been instructed to hold the ceremonial rites in the evacuation centers to keep the zeal and enthusiasm of the candidates for graduation.

"The ARMM leadership wants these graduating elementary pupils and high school students to feel that everything is being done for their good and that their dream of furthering their studies must not be weakened by the security problems now besetting their villages," Magno said.

Magno said there are tacit indications the hostile situation in the affected towns will continue until the summer vacation.

More than 30 schools in the affected towns were immediately shut last March 2 after firefights between marauding members of the brigand Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters (BIFF) and pursuing Marine and Army combatants erupted.

The government's law enforcement operation against the BIFF was launched after bandits blocked stretches of the Cotabato-Gen. Santos City Highway in Datu Unsay and Datu Saudi last February 28, provoking a series of encounters that lasted until the next day.

Guns have been silent since Friday, but evacuees in many relief sites, now more than 90,000, are reluctant to return home for fear of a resumption of the BIFF-military skirmishes.

Six soldiers and more than 30 BIFF gunmen have been killed in encounters in the past 15 days.

A spate of BIFF-military gunfights from Wednesday dawn until Thursday afternoon in Sharif Saidona and Salibo towns had swelled by more than 10,000, larger than the number of evacuees from affected villages.

Lawyer Laisa Alamia, executive secretary of ARMM, said there are already 93,402 evacuees in different relief sites in the second district of Maguindanao as of Friday dawn.

There were only more than 70,000 evacuees from March 1 until last Tuesday in different evacuation centers in the province.

Alamia said ARMM Gov. Mujiv Hataman directed Friday morning the regional government's Humanitarian Emergency Assistance and Response Team (HEART) to immediately dispatch three truckloads of relief supplies for the new evacuees.

The HEART and the Anak Mindanao Partylist, led by Rep. Sitti Djalia Turabin-Hataman dispersed last Wednesday more than 30 tons of food supplies to thousands of evacuees in a joint relief mission supported by the Army's 6th Infantry Division, the provincial government of Maguindanao and the office of Social Welfare Secretary Dinky Soliman.

Physician Kadil Sinolinding, ARMM's regional health secretary, said there are more than 2,000 pregnant women in evacuation centers that need utmost medical attention.

"These women are at great risk. We have to focus extensive attention on them," Sinolinding said.

Sinolinding said Hataman ordered last Friday the region's health department to deploy teams of trained maternal and infant caregivers to attend to the needs of the pregnant evacuees.

The ARMM government has been spending P12.3 million weekly for the food of evacuees in more than a dozen relief sites in Maguindanao.