Cotabato City—The Bangsamoro Parliament held its ground against a House bloc resolution seeking to establish a national office of the Department of Public Works and Highways in the Moro region.
A counter-resolution passed by the Bangsamoro Transition Authority Parliament was overwhelmingly voted by its members to oppose Resolution No. 33, sponsored by a House Bloc of 10 Muslim congressmen, led by Deputy Speaker and Basilan Rep. Mujiv Hataman.
Hataman presented the resolution in the House of Representatives, the day before Chief Minister Hadji Murad Ebrahim of the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao was set to meet with President Rodrigo Duterte in Malacañang on Sept. 17.
The meeting, as had been disclosed earlier, delved among others on issues of the continuity of government agencies’ programs and projects in BARMM areas, and the exploration of mineral resources in the region, particularly the Ligawasan Marsh.
BARMM Interior Minister Naguib Sinarimbo, Murad’s spokesperson, said the defunct Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao in 2002 succeeded in a bid to stop the DPWH national office from setting up a district engineering office in Marawi City in a department order and against the inclusion of its funding in the General Appropriations Act.
Sinarimbo, a lawyer, said that affirming the essence of autonomy already granted to ARMM, the Supreme Court had thwarted, as “unconstitutional,” both the DPWH-DO and the GAA provision of funding for the creation a Marawi City DEO, in its decision in the case of Disumangcop vs. Datumanong in 2002.
“The position taken by a supra-majority of the members of the BTA is to oppose the call of the Moro members of Congress for the national DPWH to establish an office in the BARMM,” Sinarimbo said.
Hataman and the other sponsors of the House bloc resolution cited Section 37 of Article 13 of Republic Act 11054, the Bangsamoro Organic Law, in asking the national government to set up a DPWH office in the BARMM.
That provision of the law says the national government shall fund the construction and maintenance of national roads, bridges, water supply, and flood control and irrigation systems and for the maintenance of existing airports, seaports and wharves in the Bangsamoro. Moreover, it adds that the national goverment shall implement these projects.
But Sinarimbo pointed out that the law does not require the establishment of an office for the national government to carry out that implementing mandate in the region.
He noted that some national agencies and their counterparts in the defunct ARMM had also opted to enter into memorandums of agreement (MoA)– and, in some instances, with the local government units — on implementing some nationally-funded infrastructure projects.
Public works documents showed that the DPWH national has since the 1990’s entered into MOAs with the regional or even with the local provincial, city or municipal government units on implementing its projects in areas where LGUs had been prior prequalified by the DPWH regional offices to undertake infrastructure projects of local scale.
During the ARMM tenure, DPWH sources said, majority of ARMM congresspersons chose the administrative regional offices of the DPWH in Regions 9, 10, and 12 to implement their sponsored congressional funded projects.
This prompted then Maguindsnao Representative Michael Mastura to rise in the Eighth Congress against what he said was an “ARMM being shortchanged” in terms of funds releases by the national government.
More recenly, the DPWH national office had entered into MOAs with ARMM or with the Army Engineering Brigade on implementing projects in interior areas with high risks of attacks on construction workers and private facilities, as what had happened last year in Basilan.