ARMM governance feats cited through 2016 special awards

COTABATO CITY - Year 2016 will be remembered by southerners as a shining season where six of their local government units received good governance citations they had never thought will happen so soon.The LGUs of Maguindanao province, Lamitan City, and the municipalities of North Upi, Parang and Wao were awarded last October by the central office of the Department of Interior and Local Government with the Seal of Good Local Governance.North Upi and Parang towns are located in Maguindanao while Wao is a hinterland town in Lanao del Sur, all in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao.The SGLG is awarded on yearly basis to municipal, provincial and city governments that meet stringent standards, including sound financial administration human security disaster preparedness business competitiveness and peace and security management.This year’s grant of the SGLG to the six LGUs was the first ever since the creation of ARMM via a plebiscite in 1990 that resulted in the ratification of its first charter, Republic Act 6734. The law was amended to become R.A. 9054 via another referendum in 2001.Local officials said it was only in the past four years that the ARMM started to rise as a functional regional government. It has also started turning around from its being hotbed of Moro rebellion and a political unit whose leaders were so divided in the past. Political solidarity among leaders in the region is now spreading around, Lanao del Sur Vice Gov. Mamintal Adiong, Jr. said Wednesday morning.Lamitan City Mayor Rose Furigay on Wednesday said they attribute their having received the SGLG from DILG Secretary Ismael Sueno to ARMM’s education, social welfare, health and infrastructure programs. We are thankful to the ARMM’s public works, health, agrarian reform, social welfare and education departments, Furigay said.Furigay said the projects of the Department of Public Works-ARMM and its eight subordinate-district engineering offices in the region, among them market centers, seaports, concrete roads, health facilities and schools buildings hastened the delivery of services by the six LGUs that received the SGLG for 2016. With these infrastructure facilities rising everywhere, we are confident more LGUs in the autonomous region will receive the SGLG in the coming years, Furigay said.Ishak Mastura, chairman of the Regional Board of Investments, said more than P3 billion worth of capitals for various business ventures had been poured into the autonomous region in the past three years by local and foreign investors. We’ve had some security problems in the past three years, but all `pocket conflicts’ in remote areas that did not affect the business climate in the ARMM’s main trading centers in the provincial and most municipal capitals, Mastura said.Mastura said they are expecting an upswing in the economy of Basilan, Sulu and Tawi-Tawi island provinces with the entry of a big off-grid power supplier, the Kaltimex Energy Corporation, to provide adequate supply of electricity to the three areas. These island provinces cannot connect to the national grid providing power to mainland Mindanao due to geographical constraints. Once fully energized, these areas will surely improve security and investment-wise, Mastura said.Mastura said the conflicts that rocked certain far-flung areas in the autonomous region in the past four years only involved small groups whose activities the local communities rabidly oppose. We’ve had some problems caused by the Abu Sayyaf and by small militant forces claiming loyalty to the Independent State of Iraq and Syria, small groups that do not have the capability to wage bigger wars against the government, Mastura said.A check at the office of the government’s Coordinating Committee on Cessation of Hostilities, which deals with a counterpart panel in the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, showed that there has not been a single encounter between the military and the MILF in any of the ARMM’s 116 towns in the past six years.The ARMM is a known bastion of the MILF, which has a current peace overture with the national government aiming to put a negotiated closure to the now four-decade Moro secessionist uprising in the country’s far south.The government and the MILF are also focused on restoring normalcy in conflict-stricken ARMM towns through bilateral infrastructure, education and social welfare interventions.