PRC opens BARMM office in Cotabato City

COTABATO CITY, Philippines — Local executives and stakeholders, among them health and social welfare workers, policemen and engineers, were elated to have in the city now a satellite office for the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM) of the Professional Regulation Commission (PRC).

Functions and powers of the PRC are not devolved to the BARMM government, which has an 80-seat parliament, whose figurehead, the region’s chief minister, Abdulraof Macacua, is also overseeing a number of ministries, as public service outfits, patterned from national line agencies.

The lawyer-entrepreneur Ronald Hallid Dimacisil Torres, president of the multi-sector Regional Advisory Council of the Police Regional Office-Bangsamoro Autonomous Region, told reporters on Friday, October 2, that the PRC’s setting up of an office in Cotabato City augurs well with their efforts to decentralize in the region the services of government entities that the BARMM government cannot create based on its charter, the Republic Act 11054, also known as the Bangsamoro Organic Law.

The PRC’s office for BARMM, launched early this week, is inside a CityMall branch in uptown Cotabato City, close to BARMM’s 32-hectare regional capitol

Radio reports on Friday quoted officials of different organizations of professionals employed in government offices, local government units and private firms and commercial establishments Cotabato City and in nearby Maguindanao del Sur and Maguindanao del Norte, both component-provinces of BARMM, as saying that they are thankful to the PRC for having established an office close to their locations.

The symbolic launching of the PRC office in BARMM early this week was together facilitated by Bangsamoro Regional Labor and Employment Minister Muslimin Sema, PRC Commissioner Erwin Enad and his subordinate-director in Region 12, Rotelo Cabugsa, and Lourdes Celeste Serrano, who is chief of PRC 12’s finance and administrative division, and a ranking representative from the CityMall Commercial Centers, Incorporated, Virginia Oasan.

"We can't thank the officials of the Philippine Regulation Commission for establishing an office for the Bangsamoro region, right in Cotabato City, its regional capital,"  said Sema, also chairman of the Moro National Liberation Front, which has a peace compact with Malacañang.

The Ministry of Labor and Employment-BARMM, whose operation Sema has been overseeing for about three years now, has projects complementing the service thrusts of the PRC. 

Professionals in Cotabato City and nearby towns needed to travel to faraway cities in Regions 11 and 12 for their PRC transactions in the past.