Farmers see bigger income with concrete farm road

MAGUINDANAO -- Patiok, a Moro corn farmer, and his children see productive days ahead now that there is a concrete road connecting their village in Ibotigen area in Sultan Kudarat town to the markets.Moro peasants in Pinaring and Ibotigen areas, both in Sultan Kudarat town in the first district of Maguindanao, had ranted for so long on the difficulty of transporting their farm products to trading centers during the rainy days due to the poor condition of the dirt road. This is something we have waited for so long. In the past our farm products do not reach the markets on time during the rainy days. Now we can bring our harvests promptly to the markets in Cotabato City even during the rainy season, Patiok, an ethnic Iranun, on Monday said in Filipino.Engineer Don Loong, regional secretary of the Department of Public Works and Highways in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, said Monday he and the mayor of Sultan Kudarat, Shameem Mastura, inaugurated last week the newly-concreted six-kilometer overland artery.The road cuts through agricultural sites in Ibotigen and Pinaring and connects the two barangays to the markets in Cotabato City and in the center of Sultan Kudarat, a historic town named after a legendary 16th century Moro warrior who fought the Spaniards for about six decades.The concreting of the six-kilometer Pinaring-Ibotigen Road was facilitated by the municipal government of Sultan Kudarat using a P70 million grant from the executive department of ARMM.The funding for the road project, drawn from the ARMM’s yearly infrastructure subsidy, was channeled through the office of Mastura through an agreement covered by government accounting regulations.Public school teachers in Pinaring and Ibotigen were also elated with the concreting of the six-kilometer road.Schooling of children was also badly affected by the poor condition of the thoroughfare during the rainy days. Now my children can reach their school with clean clothes that usually got smeared with mud in those difficult days, said a Rakma, 40-year-old mother of three high school students.