Basilan now has a ready BARMM provincial center

BASILAN --- This province has a new government complex in Lamitan City where the infant Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM) can establish a provincial center.The complex, now 90 percent complete and can accommodate provincial offices of different BARMM agencies, is a joint project of the executive department of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, ARMM’s Department of Public Works and Highways and the Basilan District Engineering Office.The BARMM shall replace the now 29-year ARMM by implication of the ratification via a plebiscite on January 21 of the Bangsamoro Organic Law, or Republic Act 11054.The measure, premised on compacts between the government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, is meant to put a diplomatic closure to decades of secessionist strife in the country’s south.Engineer Soler Undug of the Basilan DEO said Saturday the P120 million main building of ARMM’s supposed provincial government complex, located in Barangay Santa Clara in Lamitan City, is ready for inauguration.The newly-constructed Basilan DEO building is just behind the costly facility, also a project of the office of the now outgoing ARMM Gov. Mujiv Hataman, who campaigned for an affirmative vote for the BOL.Hataman, his regional public works secretary, Engineer Don Loong, and the Basilan DEO are presently constructing a P60 million-worth auditorium in the same area, also to be turned over to the BARMM. Lamitan City is proud to host the Basilan provincial operations center of the incoming BARMM entity, Lamitan City Vice Mayor Roderick Furigay said on Saturday.The ARMM administration is also turning over soon to BARMM the more than P1 billion worth Basilan transcentral road project, portions of which now straddles through former enclaves of the Abu Sayyaf in the Sampinit Complex in hinterlands in the island province.The highway will interconnect Barangay Tumahubong in Sumisip, Barangay Mahayahay in Maluso and Barangay Santa Clara, which is located in the middle of the cities of Lamitan and Isabela, the former capital of Basilan.The construction of the transcentral road involves the Hataman administration, the office of Basilan Gov. Jim Salliman, the Regional Police Office-ARMM and the Western Mindanao Command of the Armed Forces.Lt. Gen. Arnel Dela Vega, commander of WestMinCom, said he is certain Basilan will become even more peaceful under BARMM. There are existing infrastructures built by the present ARMM administration on strategic areas in the province in recent years. There is enough for BARMM to start with, he said.Dela Vega said one proof that there is sustainable peace now in Basilan was the peaceful conduct last week in Sumisip town of the ARMM regional athletic meet.The athletic meet involved more than 4,000 elementary pupils, high school and college students from local schools and from the provinces of Maguindanao, Lanao del Sur, Sulu and Tawi-Tawi, now component-areas of BARMM.Organizers said such event was too impossible to hold anywhere in Basilan when the Abu Sayyaf was still a serious threat to local security.It was ARMM's first in this island province since its creation via a plebiscite in 1990.ARMM’s education secretary, lawyer Rasol Mitmug, Jr., and Hataman have separately said the regional athletic meet was held in Sumisip to show that there is peace now in the province following the surrender of about 300 local Abu Sayyaf gunmen in the past three years.The venues of different athletic competitions during the regional meet in Sumisip were former bastions of the Abu Sayyaf.The Abu Sayyaf, originally a small band of radical Islamists, first emerged in Basilan in the early 1990s. It eventually became a Mindanao cell of the Islamic State and now wrecks havoc in Sulu, its remaining stronghold.