North Cotabato placed under state of calamity

NORTH COTABATO, Philippines - The provincial board on Tuesday declared North Cotabato under state of calamity to hasten the release of funds needed to mitigate the adverse effects of the continuing dry spell now affecting the province.

The Sangguniang Panlalawigan approved on Tuesday the request by provincial officials to declare the province under state of calamity due to continuing heavy losses incurred by farmers, whose crops had been withered by lack of rain for weeks now.

North Cotabato covers 17 towns and 40 barangays in Kidapawan City, the administrative and political capital of the province.

Reports obtained Wednesday from the office of North Cotabato Gov. Emmylou Talino-Mendoza and her subordinate-provincial agriculturist, Eliseo Mangliwan, indicated that close to 28,000 hectares of lands in the province, planted with rice and corn, had been damaged by the drought, which started last November.

Mangliwan placed at no less than P238 million their estimate of the crops scorched by heat in the past four weeks.

Some parcels of agricultural lands in the province had also been infested by rats recently.

A popular radio outfit in Central Mindanao, the Notre Dame Broadcasting Corporation (NDBC), on Monday reported the provincial government’s initial allocation of P4 million for cloud-seeding operations to induce rains needed to cushion the impact of the dry spell.

The NDBC had quoted Cynthia Ortega, the provincial disaster risk reduction and management officer, as saying they intend to spawn rain clouds over watershed areas in North Cotabato’s Alamada town and the Arakan Valley Complex and all forested areas at the sides of Mt. Apo from where springs rivers flowing downstream to peasant enclaves in low-lying areas.