COTABATO CITY — Local officials and residents of Maguindanao and North Cotabato hailed the order of President Rodrigo Roa Duterte to immediately dredge Mindanao’s vast marshland, now heavily silted and causing misery to residents due to recurring floods.
The 220,000-hectare Liguasan Marsh usually overflows and inundated low-lying communities surrounding it in Maguindanao and North Cotabato every time weather disturbances occur in the provinces of South Cotabato, Sultan Kudarat and Bukidnon.
Rivers from these provinces flow toward the marshland before exiting to the Moro Gulf via the Rio Grande de Mindanao and Tamontaka Rivers.
“This is a very welcome development,” Mayor Freddie Mangudadatu, chair of Maguindanao town mayors’ league. His elder brother, Maguindanao Governor Esmael Mangudadatu, also lauded the move of Malacañang, saying peoples’ misery will soon be a thing of the past.
Farmer Eusebio Malan of Barangay Lower Inas in M’lang, North Cotabato, said the government’s plan to dredge the marshland would surely improve his productivity.
“Every time the marsh overflows, my cropping went failure and lost my investment,” Malan, a rice farmer who owns three hectares of ricefield beside the marshland, said.
Earlier, Agriculture Secretary Emmanuel Piñol, who hails from M’lang, said President Duterte has ordered the dredging of the Liguasan Marsh and the three major flood-spewing rivers of Agusan, Pampanga and Cagayan provinces.
Piñol said he recommended to President Duterte to start the dredging because frequent flooding in these areas affect and destroy crops every year.
“President Duterte approved my recommendation and it shows his love for the poor,” he said, adding that floods affect mostly poor farmers around the marshland.
Abdulah Abudatu, another farmer in Datu Piang, said he hopes the dredging plan would commence soon as weather disturbances outside Maguindanao continue to affect farmers in Datu Piang.
“We catch flood waters from other provinces, we always end up the losers,” he said in the vernacular. (Edwin Fernandez/PNA)
