Police engage villages, youth to fight terrorism, drugs

COTABATO CITY - The city’s police community relation unit is embarking on massive village-based engagements to effectively combat drugs trade and terrorism at community level.

Such is the advocacy pushed by the Police Community Affairs and Development Group (PCADG) under its director, P/BGen Joselito Daniel, according to its local units here.

Police Major Achmad Alibonga of the Police Community Affairs and Development Group (PCADG) in Cotabato City said villages of mostly poor residents were likely vulnerable to exploitation by rings of drug syndicate, because of extreme economic pressure.

Alibonga said as former PCADG head in Lanao del Sur Provincial Police Office (PPO) his unit then had also conducted Community Anti-Terrorism Awareness to the Senior High Students of the Al-Khwarizmi International College Foundation, Inc. in Marawi City.

(The school is named after the 9th Century Muslim mathematician and philosopher Jafar Muhammad Musa Al Khwarizmi, known to have earliest developed mathematical operations in his book  al-Kitāb al-Mukhtaṣar fī Ḥisāb al-Jabr wal-Muqābalah (The Compendious Book on Calculation by Completion and Balancing) from which the word “algebra” has been derived).

Alibonga said similar orientations are shared by his unit with young citizens through the Kabataan Kontra Droga at Terorismo (KKDAT).

He said residents should learn alternative microeconomic engagements at community level to fight extreme poverty, especially during the difficult period of pandemic.

Alibonga said he had encouraged residents of poor communities like Barangay Tukananes, a midstream delta community here, to chip-in and save a peso a day per household member, and place the savings under a common fund managed for specifically defined purpose(s) in times of need like hospitalization—and even for credit union, following principles of Islamic financing windows.

Alibonga said government offices like the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) can be drawn in for support intervention, including entrepreneurship training seminars.

In small forums, Alibonga said he would tell residents that they are effectively empowered when they are organized for good purposes.

Government agencies like the Ministry of Trade Industry, Investment and Tourism (MTIIT) in the case of the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM), may also get in for some partnership programs to infuse in added financial capital to small-scale livelihood undertakings like a cottage industry for the residents, he said he told residents.