ARMM, Maguinanao extend aid to flood victims

COTABATO CITY - Relief aid workers in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) are on their way to Sultan sa Barongis and other municipalities inundated by flood water due to low pressure area affecting Mindanao.Lawyer Kirby Abdullah, focal person of ARMM Humanitarian Emergency Action and Response Team (HEART), told DXMS Radyo Bida thtaid workers are to extend relief assistance to more than 2,000 families or about 14,500 individuals in 12 villageswho were displaced by floods since last week.Sultan sa Barongis, a town in the borders of Sultan Kudarat and Maguindanao provinces, have been placed under state of calamity after the Ala River and Kapingkong River overflowed.Aside from Sultan sa Barongis, also affected were the towns ofDatu
Paglas, Paglat, Buluan, Mangudadatu, Pandag, Gen. SK Pendatun and Rajah Buayan, the office of Maguindanao Gov. Esmael Toto Mangudadatu showed.ARMM Gov. Mujiv Hataman on Wednesday directed Abdullah, his assistant secretary for Maguindanao,to lead relief operations, starting in Sultan sa Barongis, where 14,565 villagers were forced to evacuate to high grounds by rampaging floods that hit low-lying agricultural enclaves in the area more than a week ago.ARMM officials said HEART’s operation in Sultan sa Barongis, which began 6and00 a.m. Thursday, will complement the relief missions initiated by the office of Mangudadatu in the area early this week.Lynette Estandarte, Maguindanao’s chief budget officer, and her subordinates on Monday dispersed three tons of food and non-food relief supplies to the displaced Sultan sa Barongis folks, now confined in makeshift relief sites.Employees of the provincial government also dispersed pails, kitchen wares and sleeping mats to evacuees. Classes in public schools in flooded barangays there have also been suspended,” said Estandarte, concurrent supervisor of Maguindanao’s disaster response group.Estandarte said employees of the provincial government are now packing food rations, comprised of canned goods, instant noodles and rice for distribution to flood victims in the 11 other flooded Maguindanao towns.Estandarte’s group on Wednesday also delivered food packs for more than a thousand flood victims in Datu Paglas town, about seven kilometers northeast of the provincial capital, Buluan.Reports reaching HEART’s operation center in Cotabato City said the floods that hit 12 of Maguindanao’s 36 towns also ravaged vast swaths of lands planted with rice and corn.Abdullah said the floods devastated 272 hectares of rice farms in the province.He said flashfloods also swept through 587 hectares of corn farms along rivers and near swamps that connect to the Liguasan Delta at the tri-boundary of Maguindanao, Sultan Kudarat and North Cotabato provinces.The Liguasan Delta, touted as Asia’s largest marshland, is a catch basin for more than a dozen rivers that spring from hinterlands in surrounding provinces.