BANGSAMORO NEWS UPDATES

COTABATO CITY --- Leaders in the Bangsamoro region again urged constituents to obey Malacañang’s anti-coronavirus regulations, invoking Ramadhan fasting norms as good insurance from infection.

Muslims fast from dawn to dusk during the month of Ramadhan, which started April 24, both as a religious obligation and imbue among them the value of self-restraint to achieve spiritual perfection.

COTABATO CITY — Bangsamoro Inter-Agency Task Force (IATF) on Covid-19 will implement General Community Quarantine (GCQ) in the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM) starting May 1.

This is in accordance with the recently released guidelines of the Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases (IATF-EID), wherein low-risk and moderate-risk areas in the country shall be placed under GCQ.

MARAWI CITY --- The Smart Communications and the provincial government of Lanao del Sur are setting up a COVID-19 public telecommunications information platform in Lanao del Sur province.

The United States Agency for International Development, which is helping the Lanao del Sur provincial government in its war on coronavirus, is supporting the “infocast” communication project.

Lanao del Sur Gov. Mamintal Adiong, Jr. said Tuesday the infocast project shall start disseminating within the week vital COVID-19 updates via phone messaging.

COTABATO CITY - Some 30 armed men went into rampage Monday morning and destroyed the sub-office of Talitay Mayor MOner Sabal in Barangay Gadungan, police said.

Police Major Solaiman Bakal, town’s police chief, said the incident occurred at around 8am today while Mayor Sabal was on his way to the sub-office with his staff.

“No one was hurt since no one has arrived yet, however those person who barged the office destroyed some of the stuffs there,” Bakal said.

COTABATO CITY --- The provincial government of Basilan released a P5,000 Ramadhan bonus for each employee, their fourth since 2016 and something past administrations never did.

Ranking employees, among them division chiefs under the office of Basilan Gov. Jim Salliman told reporters Friday their bonuses were released early this week.

The grant of the yearly Ramadhan bonus to employees of the provincial government, among them 631 permanent staff members and a number of contractual and job order workers was never done by past governors.

COTABATO CITY --- Muslims in the country will start observing Friday the Ramadhan season without nightly taraweeh prayer rites in mosques to ensure their safety from the deadly coronavirus.

The Darul Iftah, or House of Opinions, in the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, announced Wednesday night that the Ramadhan, a holy month in Islam, shall start Friday, April 24.

Muslims fast from dawn to dusk during the Ramadhan that lasts for one lunar cycle as a form of sacrifice and to learn the importance of self-restraint in achieving spiritual perfection.

COTABATO CITY - THE U.S. government has approved an additional funding support to the Philippines’ fight against the spread of the pandemic Corona Virus 2019 (Covid19) in the form of health and humanitarian assistance package worth Php269 million ($5.3 million)

COTABATO CITY — The island provinces of BARMM maintained zero positive Coronavirus Disease (Covid-19) case according to the region’s Health Minister Dr. Saffrullah Dipatuan on Wednesday, April 22, in a virtual press briefing held in Cotabato City.

The BARMM island provinces include Basilan, Sulu and Tawi-Tawi (BaSulTa) where no confirmed positive cases of Covid-19 were registered since the onset of the pandemic on January.

Dipatuan said while the BaSulTa has a total 127 suspected cases, none were tested positive for Covid-19.