ARMM converting Lamitan Bulingan Falls into tourist spot

LAMITAN CITY --- There is a scenic waterfalls here officials are trying to develop into an eco-tourism site to lure visitors and disprove notions projecting the city and nearby towns as unsafe for outsiders.

Mercedita Villarin, chairperson of Barangay Bulingan here, where the picturesque 30-feet, 40-meter wide Bulingan Falls is located, said she and her constituents are grateful to the agencies now providing the infrastructure interventions complementing their bid to convert the waterfalls into a tourist spot.
Once developed, people would come and then tell their families about the peace and progress spreading around our barangay and other areas in Lamitan City and in the neighboring towns in Basilan province,” Villarin said in Chavacano dialect.The road connecting the Bulingan Falls to the city proper, straddling through several agricultural enclaves in between, is now being concreted through the joint initiative of Lamitan City Mayor Rose Furigay, the executive department of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM), the regional government’s public works department and the Basilan District Engineering Office (DEO).Lamitan City is the capital of Basilan, an ARMM component province, which has 11 towns, now interconnected with concrete roads and seaports, constructed jointly from between 2012 to 2015 by the office of Regional Public Works Secretary Don Loong and Engineer Soler Undug of the Basilan DEO.Villarin said the full conversion of the Bulingan Falls into an eco-tourism site will usher in livelihood opportunities for her constituents who are engaged in entrepreneurial activities.Records from the office of Undug, who is overseeing the infrastructure projects in Basilan of ARMM Gov. Mujiv Hataman, indicated that the regional government has been implementing since 2013, by gradual phases, the concreting of an arterial network essential to the development of the Bulingan Falls tourism site.The road network is comprised of the Limook-Balobo-Bulingan thoroughfare and the Bulingan and Bulingan-Look Bridges.The ARMM government allocated a total of P70 million for the two bridges, drawn from the region’s 2015 and 2016 yearly infrastructure subsidy.

Undug’s subordinate-engineers at the Basilan DEO said only 200 meters of the 11-kilometer tourism artery, traversing peasant enclaves, remain to be concreted.

That still unfinished stretch shall be completed soon,” Undug said.The accomplishment record pertaining to the Bulingan eco-tourism infrastructure thrusts was confirmed to and//www.ndbcnews.com.ph www.ndbcnews.com.ph by government auditors and accountants involved in the implementation of the projects.The Bulingan Bridge is now 60 percent complete, according to audit records obtained by The STAR.

Hadja Nuriya Jamaldin, assistant superintendent of public schools in Basilan, said the Bulingan Falls is a good site for on-field tours of students from across the island province. It is important for our students to fully understand the socio-economic and eco-tourism potentials of our home-province, which we are proud of,” Jamaldin said.

The incumbent vice-mayor of Lamitan, Roderick Furigay, said he is thankful to Hataman, Loong and Undug for their hands-on involvement in the implementation of the projects in the surroundings of Barangay Bulingan.