BULUAN, Maguindanao—Overwhelmed residents welcomed here the prospect of having a modern sports complex to host significant sports events in the near future.
Maguindanao Governor Esmael Mangudadatu said President Rodrigo Duterte has approved the allocation of P 100 million for the construction of a multi-level sports complex here.
Gov. Mujiv Hataman of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, who together with Mangudadatu laid the corner stone of the proposed sports complex on March 8, said the Department of Budget and Management has released the fund through the region.
The sports complex is envisioned to win more young people into the right track of human development through sports and proper education, Mangudadatu said to the applause of residents witnessing the ceremony.
The seeming expansion of the province’s development here eastward, is a welcome development even to natives of this town—Edd Usman, a journalist, who for decades has lived with his family in Metro Manila, and Ibramim Kamensa, a government worker.
Mangudadatu said education is almost an emerging slogan in his government’s continuing call upon the youth to assert their role in the pursuit of human and community development in a world fast-changing.
In the record of the Maguindanao Peace Program (MagPeace), which offers study grant fund, many of the indigent students it has helped send to school, have become professionals in their own chosen fields of endeavor.
Hataman said another program allocation also for P 100 million would pertain to continuity of the Buluan River Development and Flood-Control Project, which will be opened for bidding by the region’s Department of Public Works and Highways.
Provincial Engineer Hadji Abdulwahab Tunga said the sports complex, considered a presidential gift of a lifetime to young Moros, will have a 10-lane indoor pool for swimming competition events, while other sections will be partitioned for board-floored basketball and volleyball courts. The rest of its external space on a 1.8 hectare area will be allotted for other sports facilities like track-and-field oval, tennis courts and baseball field.
Resident Rasul Bedtekan, a young professional, said this now poses the challenge on the Moro youth to literally make or break in a “season of peace,” which many hope the Moro people will achieve with a timely passage of the Bangsamoro Basic Law by Congress.
“In a long journey to peace, Maguindanao residents would have reason to rejoice as they ponder on the prospect of having such modern sports facilities that both the old and the young generations would experience and enjoy playing on,” Mangudadatu said.
Engineer Abdulrahman Asim, provincial administrator, said Senator Manny Pacquiao had also committed to help allocate fund for a boxing training center which would form part of the sports complex.