Sectors revive conflict-affected Marawi public library

COTABATO CITY— Cross-section efforts to reopen and convert into a “peace education facility” the Marawi City Public Library, shut as the Maute terror group laid siege to 11 barangays in the city for five months in 2017 and remained closed due the COVID-19 pandemic, are gaining headway.

Lanao del Sur Gov. Mamintal Adiong Jr., whose office is overseeing the operations of the library, told reporters on Sunday that a private academic institution in Cotabato City, the Albert Einstein School, donated last Thursday 10,000 textbooks in support of efforts to revive the mothballed facility.

Adiong said the science, health, mathematics, geography and history textbooks were personally turned over last Thursday by Seabright Morales, administrator of the Albert Einstein School, to two senior staff members of the Lanao del Sur governor’s office, Abdul Mikhail Balindong and Maharlanny Macalangcom Alonto, and were transported to Marawi City on the same day.

“It’s a big help to our initiative of making the Marawi City public library operational again,” Adiong said.

He said that they would embark on special projects essential to the conversion of the library into a facet for promotion of Muslim-Christian religious and cultural solidarity.

A Maranaw member of the 80-seat Bangsamoro parliament, the lawyer Paisalin Pangandaman Tago, who is also functioning as transportation and communications minister of the autonomous region, on Sunday said that he will encourage other Maranaw members of the regional law-making body to plan out together how they can help their provincial government revitalize and improve the Marawi City public library. 

“We in Lanao del Sur are supportive of education programs for our people,” Tago told reporters.