Flooded Maguindanao del Sur province placed under state of calamity

COTABATO CITY — The Sangguniang Panlalawigan of Maguindanao del Sur placed the province under state of calamity on Tuesday after floods swept through 17 of its 24 towns following heavy rains in mountain ranges around early this week.

In separate reports on Wednesday, officials of the Police Regional Office-Bangsamoro Autonomous Region, the Army’s 6th Infantry Division and the Maguindanao del Sur Provincial Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Office stated that 72, 309 Moro and non-Moro families got displaced by the calamity.

Maguindanao del Sur is a component-province of the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao that also covers Maguindanao del Norte, Lanao del Sur, Basilan, Sulu and Tawi-Tawi.

Many of the barangays in the 17 flooded Maguindanao del Sur towns are close to rivers and swamps that connect to the 220,000-hectare Ligasawan Delta, a catch basin for more than a dozen large waterways that springs from hinterlands in Sultan Kudarat, South Cotabato, Cotabato and Bukidnon provinces.

Ameer Jehad Ambolodto, chief of the Maguindanao del Sur PDRRMO, told reporters on Saturday that the provincial board’s resolution declaring the province under a state of calamity in is a requisite for the allocation of funds for relief operations from the provincial coffer.    

“We are moving around to extend relief services to affected residents,” he told reporters on Wednesday morning.

Ambolodto said Maguindanao del Sur Gov. Mariam Mangudadatu is closely monitoring the PDRRMO’s relief operations, being assisted by municipal officials and units of the Bureau of Fire Protection, the police and the military.

The office of BARMM’s social services minister, Raissa Jadjurie has also been facilitating relief operations in flooded barangays in the Bangsamoro region's Special Geographic Area, or SGA, in different towns in the territory of Cotabato province in Region 12.

Relief workers from the Ministry of Social Welfare and Development-BARMM delivered on Tuesday more than ten tons of rice, canned goods and instant coffee, to SGA residents who were forced to relocate to high grounds due to the inundation of their villages since Monday.

Thousands of villagers in two towns in Maguindanao del Sur that are also in the periphery of Cotabato province, Montawal and Pagalungan, both touted as gateways to the Ligawasan Delta, had also been displaced by floods.