Cotabato City officials mull state of calamity declaration

COTABATO CITY --- Officials will declare the city under state of calamity if floodwaters from rivers swelled by heavy rains will continue to spread through low-lying villages around.Rivers straddling through Cotabato City started to overflow last week, inundating 20 barangays and affecting more than 12,000 residents whose needs the city government is now helping provide.Halima Satol-Ibrahim, chief city information officer, said on Friday that Mayor Cynthia Guiani-Sayadi is just waiting for the final flood assessment by the City Disaster Risk Reduction Management Council as basis for declaring the city under state of calamity.Guiani-Sayadi and Vice Mayor Graham Dumama toured the 20 flooded barangays in the city on Thursday to distribute relief supplies to flood-stricken Muslim, Christian and Lumad residents.The city’s 37 barangays are crisscrossed by tributaries of the Rio Grande de Mindanao and many other large rivers that connect to the 220,000-hectare Liguasan Delta in the upper valley of central Mindanao.The Liguasan Delta is a catch basin for rain-generated floodwaters from mountain ranges in North Cotabato, South Cotabato, Sultan Kudarat and Bukidnon provinces.The office of Guiani-Sayadi and the City Schools Division of the Department of Education are planning now on how to have special classes in higher grounds for children from schools located in flooded barangays.Satol-Ibrahim said 10 city schools are located in flood-stricken barangays.The city mayor has also deployed health workers to attend to flood victims now afflicted by common ailments.Affected barangay folk have urged the Mindanao Development Authority (MINDA), whose main office is just in Davao City, to focus on the immediate dredging of rivers here from silt that accumulated overtime.The MINDA has a flood control and management program for central Mindanao, but people in the region have perennially been ranting about not even seeing the agency address the problem.Floodwaters from higher areas in central Mindanao first converge in interconnected rivers and swamps in Cotabato City before flowing downstream to the city’s western coast to drain at the Moro Gulf.Guiani-Sayadi on Friday called on residents in flood-prone areas here to help monitor the levels of rivers in their surroundings and to immediately evacuate if necessary. Forced evacuations will be imposed if the situation so requires, Guiani-Sayadi said.Guiani-Sayadi said their main concern, meantime, is to provide flood victims with humanitarian support.