SAF battalion deployed in troubled Pikit town

COTABATO CITY - Stakeholders were elated with Tuesday’s deployment of a battalion-size Special Action Force contingent in Pikit, Cotabato to help address the nagging security problems in the municipality. 

The SAF is an elite combat-ready unit of the Philippine National Police, ready for more extensive and intricate law-enforcement operations.

Two members of the 80-seat Bangsamoro parliament, Datu Jambo Matalam and the physician Kadil Sinolinding, Jr., both related to big clans in Pikit, separately said Thursday the presence of a SAF battalion in the municipality will help deter wanton gun attacks in the area.

Sinolinding, however, said the local communities still ought to help the local government unit of Pikit, the police and the military in preventing crimes in the municipality.

“Without community support, all of these peace and security initiatives cannot fully take off. We have to support these efforts,” Sinolinding, most known by his moniker “doctor sa parliamento ng Bangsamoro,” said in a statement Thursday.

Officials of the Pikit Municipal Police Station confirmed to reporters Thursday the deployment in Pikit last Tuesday of a SAF battalion from the Police Regional Office-11 in Davao City.

No fewer than 40 people have been killed in gun attacks in Pikit since late 2021, all unsolved.

Most of the deadly incidents happened in barangays in Pikit that are under the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao.

There are 63 barangays in different towns in Cotabato province that are now grouped together as BARMM’s Special Geographic Area (SGA).

The chairperson of the Cotabato Provincial Peace and Order Council, Gov. Emmylou Mendoza, said Thursday she, too, was elated with the deployment in Pikit of the four SAF companies from PRO-11.

“Many of the barangays in Pikit are already under BARMM but our provincial government is still ready to extend peace and security interventions, via the Bangsamoro government, to the residents there,” Mendoza said.