The governor of Basilan and the health minister of the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM) had reached a deal to cooperate on public service programs for the Muslim and Christian communities in the island province.

Gov. Mujiv Hataman, elected to office just last May 12, and the regional lawmaker Kadil Sinolinding, Jr. met in Basilan’s provincial capitol in Lamitan City on Wednesday, August 6, and agreed to help each other push forward joint health interventions for the local communities.

Basilan, one of the five provinces in BARMM, has 11 towns and two cities, Lamitan and Isabela.

Sinolinding, a physician-ophthalmologist trained in India, also functions as BARMM’s health minister in concurrent capacity.

Sinolinding was health secretary of the now defunct Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao when Hataman was its regional governor.

The ARMM, created in 1992, was replaced with a more empowered BARMM in 2019, a product of 22 years of peace talks between the government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front.

BARMM’s chief minister, Abrulrauf Macacua, is a member of the MILF’s central committee.

Besides its public service thrusts for residents of Basilan, the Hataman administration is also focused on peacebuilding activities meant to boost the business potentials of the province, now touted as the new investment hub in BARMM.

Basilan had been declared totally liberated from the Abu Sayyaf about three months ago by the police, the military and local executives after some 400 members of the terror group in the province surrendered in batches, from between 2015 to 2023, and pledged allegiance to the government.

The erstwhile Abu Sayyaf terrorists had been reintegrated into Basilan’s mainstream society, now thriving peacefully as farmers, fishermen, tricycle drivers, entrepreneurs and agricultural plantation workers. (August 6, 2025, Lamitan City, Basilan, Bangsamoro Region)