REGION | New road open for public use in Sultan Kudarat

The newly-concreted Banubo-Mulaog artery in Sultan Kudarat, Maguindanao was opened to public use on Friday. Philstar/John Unson

MAGUINDANAO, Philippines – There is new concrete road connecting two agricultural areas in Sultan Kudarat town that will now give Moro peasants access to markets all the time.

Municipal officials, Gov. Mujiv Hataman of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) and his public works secretary, engineer Don Loong, on Friday opened to public use the newly-concreted Banubo-Mulaog Road in Sultan Kudarat.

The historic Sultan Kudarat town, located in the first district of Maguindanao, is a bastion of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF).

The MILF has many members in the municipality that rely mainly on farming as source of income. The group’s main enclave, Camp Darapanan, is located in northwest of Sultan Kudarat.

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The P13.2-million road was constructed by the municipal government of Sultan Kudarat using a grant from ARMM’s yearly infrastructure subsidy.

The project was implemented by the office of Sultan Kudarat Mayor Shameem Mastura via a memorandum of agreement with the Hataman administration, subject to state accounting laws.

More than 2,000 farmers, many of them members of the MILF, stand to benefit from the convenient connectivity now of their farms in Barangays Banubo and Mulaog to places where they sell their harvests.

The newly-concreted road was virtually impassable during the rainy days while yet a dirt artery, causing farmers heavy losses due to constraints in transporting their farm products to trading centers on time.

Hataman said the newly-concreted road will be extended within the year to Barangay Sinditan in the same municipality.

Documents from state auditors and the Department of Public Works and Highways-ARMM indicated that the Hataman administration implemented 22.3 kilometers of road projects in Sultan Kudarat alone from 2012 to 2016.

Sultan Kudarat is one of the 11 towns in the first district of Maguindanao.

The regional government has earmarked P150 million more for the concreting of 12.7 kilometers of farm-to-market roads in the same municipality this year.