Datu Blah Sinsuat now has IRA as BOL benefit

MAGUINDANAO - A seaside town without an Internal Revenue Allotment since its creation 11 years ago will now have a monthly IRA from the national coffer, courtesy of the Mindanao peace process.

Muslim and Christian residents of Datu Blah Sinsuat town held a traditional kanduli, or thanksgiving rite, last weekend after learning the week before that their local government unit will start receiving IRA this year, possibly starting first quarter of 2020, from the Department of Budget and Management.

Lawyer Naguib Sinarimbo, local government minister of the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, said Tuesday the DBM is now setting the amount of the monthly IRA for Datu Blah Sinsuat based on  its calculation formula.

Datu Blah Sinsuat is located in the first district of Maguindanao, one of the five provinces in BARMM.

BARMM’s charter, the Republic Act 11054, or the Bangsamoro Organic Law, obliges the national government to grant monthly IRA to more than a dozen municipalities in the Bangsamoro core territory that were created by the now defunct Regional Assembly of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao.

“Residents of this municipality are grateful to President Rodrigo Duterte and to the Bangsamoro regional government for this good tiding,” Datu Blah Sinsuat Mayor Marshall Sinsuat said Tuesday.

Datu Blah Sinsuat, covering 11 barangays in the western coast of Maguindanao, was carved from North Upi, Maguindanao via a legislation enacted 11 years ago by the then ARMM law-making body.

The ARMM was replaced with BARMM in February last year after BOL’s ratification via a plebiscite three weeks before.

Besides Sinarimbo, BARMM dignitaries, Muhaquer Iqbal and Abdulraof Macacua, regional ministers for education and natural resources, respectively, were also present in Saturday's kanduli event in Barangay Pura, Datu Blah Sinsuat.

Representatives from the provincial government of Maguindanao, former Congresswoman Sandra Sema and her spouse, the erstwhile Cotabato City Mayor Muslimin Sema, and Datu Bimbo Sinsuat, an incumbent member of the Sangguniang Panlalawigan, also attended the gathering.

“We can’t thank them enough for all the support they have been extending to our LGU,” Sinsuat said.

Sinsuat said credit for the survival of their LGU without IRA has to go partly to the former governor of ARMM, the now Basilan Rep. Mujiv Hataman, who provided the municipality with infrastructure projects needed to boost governance and delivery of services to residents.

“We are in for even brighter days under the BARMM government, which has awesome powers that can help improve the LGUs in its area of coverage,” Sinsuat said.

He said he and his constituents did not resent voting in favor of the BOL during the January 2019 plebiscite for its ratification.

The national government conceded, under the BOL, a yearly P70 billion block grant to the Bangsamoro region from where the regional government can draw allocations for infrastructure, social welfare, health and education programs for the local communities.