Former guerilla-medics now barangay health workers

COTABATO CITY - The Bangsamoro government has initially employed 1,049 former combatant-medics of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, among them women, as barangay health workers in provinces and cities under its jurisdiction.

A physician in the 80-seat regional parliament, Kadil Monera Sinolinding, Jr., told reporters on Wednesday that the MILF medics had been provided with accreditations by the Ministry of Health-Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao as a prelude to their enlistment this week as barangay health workers in their respective municipalities.

“Imagine the consolation we get from seeing former enemies of the state, MILF guerillas, who fought military forces in previous decades, now employed as barangay health workers. This is another remarkable dividend of the Mindanao peace process, worth nurturing,” Sinolinding said.

The physician-ophthalmologist Sinolinding, who is chairperson of the health committee of the BARMM parliament, said enlisting the former guerillas trained in emergency response and handling and transport to medical dispensaries of sick patients, or gunshot and blast victims, is parallel with the normalization thrusts of the two peace compacts between the government and the MILF.

The two accords, the 2012 Framework Agreement on Bangsamoro, and, subsequently, the 2014 Comprehensive Agreement on Bangsamoro, paved the way for the creation in 2019 of BARMM, replacing the already 27-year Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao that was not as politically and administratively empowered as the present Bangsamoro regional government.

The employment of MILF medics as barangay health workers is a joint program of the regional parliament, under Chief Minister Ahod Balawag Ebrahim, and the office of Sinolinding, who is most known throughout BARMM as “doctor sa parliamento,” and the Bangsamoro region’s health ministry. Ebrahim is chairman of the MILF’s central committee.

Sinolinding said his office and the MoH-BARMM are targeting the employment in the coming months of up to a thousand more medics from the MILF and the Moro National Liberation Front.

The MNLF and Malacañang forged on September 2, 1996, a peace agreement that diplomatically sealed off more than 20 years of hostility between both sides.

Senior leaders of the MILF and the MNLF are now together managing the BARMM government, either as members of the regional parliament, or appointed heads of different regional agencies that have extension offices in the provinces of, Maguindanao del Sur, Maguindanao del Norte, Lanao del Sur, Basilan, Sulu and Tawi-Tawi, and in the cities of Cotabato, Marawi and Lamitan.