Cops want speed limit ordinance in Maguindanao Norte town

COTABATO CITY - The police want a municipal speed limit ordinance for a highway straddling through Datu Odin Sinsuat in Maguindanao del Norte following an accident Sunday that left six people dead and seriously injured 13 others.

Major Regie Albellera, police chief of Datu Odin Sinsuat, told reporters Tuesday they shall ask local officials to impose, via an ordinance by the Sangguniang Bayan, a 60 kilometer-per-hour speed limit for all vehicles plying through the entire stretch of the Cotabato-Isulan Highway in the municipality.

“We are hoping that the Datu Odin Sinsuat municipal council will act on that,” Albellera said.

Six persons died while 13 others were hurt in an accident involving three vehicles, a pick-up truck, a passenger van and a tricycle, early Sunday in Barangay Gubat in Datu Odin Sinsuat.

Three of the six fatalities, driver Unasan Kaul, and his passengers, Norhaimen Baladek and Manaut Guialudin, were together in a Toyota Hi-Ace passenger van that collided head-on with a black Toyota Hilux pick-up truck in a stretch of the Cotabato-Isulan Highway in Barangay Gubat in Datu Odin Sinsuat.

All three of them died on the spot.

Albellera said the injured driver of the pick-up truck, Bomber Gani, and two more van passengers, an old woman named Kaidu Manalasal and Mamakong Salimbao, died one after another in a hospital later.

Barangay officials and responding probers from the Datu Odin Sinsuat Municipal Police Station said Gani’s pick-up truck, bound for South Cotabato province from Cotabato City, first hit a tricycle and, subsequently, rammed the approaching passenger van as it veered to the left side of the highway.