COTABATO CITY — Local executives and peace advocacy blocs on Wednesday pledged support for the revitalized Bangsamoro health ministry, saddled with technical and administrative challenges that stymied its operation in the past years.
Officials of the eight newly-created Bangsamoro towns inside Cotabato province in Region 12 told reporters on Wednesday that there have been improvements in the delivery of services in their communities by the Ministry of Health-Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao in recent weeks, a result of the joint interventions by the region’s chief minister, Ahod Balawag Ebrahim, and Regional Health Minister Kadil Monera Sinolinding Jr.
Ebrahim placed last May the physician-ophthalmologist Sinolinding at the helm of the Ministry of Health-BARMM, then beset with operation problems, partly due to mismanagement and other issues .
Among the problems that Ebrahim and Sinolinding, also a concurrent member of the 80-seat regional parliament, first addressed together is the stalled release of the honorarium of barangay frontline anti-COVID 19 health workers who had served at the height of the pandemic that broke out in 2020 and have continued working in their areas of assignment despite compensation woes.
Radio outfits in Cotabato City and in nearby Bangsamoro provinces had quoted in reports last week a number of the affected health workers as saying that they have never thought of still receiving their delayed allowances.
Mayor Salik Mamasabulod of Pagalungan, Maguindanao del Sur told reporters on Wednesday that he is thankful to the Ministry of Health-BARMM and Ebrahim’s office for having built a health station each in Barangay Damalasak and in the town proper of their municipality that they inaugurated early this week.
“Me and my constituents in Pagalungan shall support the programs of the reinvigorated Bangsamoro health ministry as a reciprocation of the public service efforts of its new minister and his superior, the regional chief minister,” Mamasabulod said.
The Ministry of Health-BARMM had also facilitated in the past two months the distribution of more than two dozen ambulances to its health service facets, some of which were procured by members of the 80-member regional lawmaking body.
Mayor Rolando Sacdalan of Midsayap, a municipality under Cotabato province in Region 12 but has 13 barangays under BARMM, said that he is thankful to the Ministry of Health-BARMM for having facilitated a series of medical outreach missions for residents of the predominantly Moro areas in his municipality in recent weeks.
“The residents of these Bangsamoro barangays are no longer under my watch but we continue to serve them still because they come to our town center to sell their farm products, buy merchandise that they need in their homes and seek medical attention in clinics and hospitals around,” Sacdalan said.
Sinolinding reported the accomplishments in the past three months of the Ministry of Health-BARMM to stakeholders and representatives of different media outfits during a gathering last Monday, attended by representatives of different government agencies, among them the physician Abdullah Dumama, assistant secretary of the Department of Health.
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