More farming equipment for Maguindanao from DA central office

MAGUINDANAO --- Malacañang has intensified its bid to empower farmers in Maguindanao province to insulate them from militants hyping poverty as reason to revolt and join their fold.Agriculture Secretary Emmanuel Piñol said Thursday another farming equipment package had been released to the provincial government of Maguindanao to complement its programs meant to improve the productivity of farmers vulnerable to recruitment by violent religious extremists operating in the fashion of the Islamic State.The package consisted of dozens of water pumps, hand tractors, motorized hand tillers and egg incubators needed in poultry production. These were personally distributed by Gov. Esmael Mangudadatu last week to local government units in Maguindanao, Piñol said.Maguindanao, a component-province of ARMM, has 36 towns divided into two congressional districts.Mangudadatu, now in his third and last term as governor of Maguindanao, has livelihood programs in barangays where there is presence of misguided Islamic militants trying to sabotage the peace process between Malacañang and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front.Piñol said the Mangudadatu administration, actively supporting the government-MILF peace initiative, is a staunch endorser of the proposed Bangsamoro Basic Law.The bill, premised on all compacts forged by government and MILF negotiators in the past 18 years, is meant to address the southern Mindanao Moro issue hounding the region for five decades now.The bicameral committee of the House of Representatives and Senate isin the final phase now on its deliberation on the BBL and is expected to approve it within the week for subsequent signing by President Rodrigo Duterte. We in the Department of Agriculture ought to support the peace efforts of the provincial government because these are the more effective means of addressing peace and security issues in remote barangays in Maguindanao, Piñol said.He said the office of Mangudadatu has also been helping reintegrate into the local communities more than a dozen now reforming former members of the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom fighters who surrendered in batches to the Army’s 6thInfantry Division from between April to June this year.The BIFF, rabidly opposed to Malacañang’s diplomatic overture with the MILF, is using the black Islamic State flag as revolutionary banner.Piñol said he is elated with how the provincial government of Maguindanao is addressing security problems in the province with the help of the Police Regional Office-Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, the units of 6thID, and local commanders of the MILF.The MILF and the government are bound by an interim 1997 ceasefire accord to cooperate in maintaining law and order in areas where there are recognized rebel camps now called peace zones. The continuing releases since last year of farm equipment by the office of Piñol to Maguindanao province is part of DA’s Special Area for Agricultural Development Program, most known by its acronym SAAD.Besides the latest SAAD farming equipment grant to Maguindanao that Mangudadatu distributed to farming organizations and local government units last week, the DA central office also released P25 million worth of assistance to the governor’s office for other agricultural ventures.