COTABATO CITY (March 14, 2026) —- Thousands more of marginalized Muslim families in Central Mindanao received rice and other food rations and medicines as Ramadhan offering during separate outreach missions this week of teams from the offices of public officials in the region.
Mohammad Kelly Antao, a member of the 80-seat Bangsamoro regional parliament, told reporters on Friday, March 13, that the office of Cotabato Gov. Emmylou Taliño-Mendoza, a staunch supporter of Malacañang’s peace overtures with southern Moro communities, has distributed 28,451 bags of rice, weighing 25 kilos each, to Muslim constituents observing the Ramadhan fasting season since February 19.
Physically-fit Muslims fast from dawn to dusk during the Ramadhan, a holy month in Islam lasting from between 28-30 days based on the Hijrah lunar calendar, as a religious obligation. They focus on reparation for wrongdoings and reconciliation with adversaries during the period.
Local executives and traditional ethnic Iranun and Maguindanaon community leaders separately said on Friday that 3,014 villagers were supplied with rice by teams from Mendoza’s office during its latest outreach activity, held on Thursday, in Makilala and President Roxas towns and in Cotabato’s provincial capital, Kidapawan City.
Antao, who had served as member of the Cotabato Sangguniang Panlalawigan for three consecutive terms, said the Ramadhan rice distribution activity of the Cotabato provincial government, launched two weeks ago, had covered 66 predominantly Moro barangays in the province.
Local executives in the eight newly-created Bangsamoro towns, grouped together as the Special Geographic Area, or SGA, under the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao but are inside the territory of Cotabato province in Region 12, were quoted in Friday’s radio reports as saying that residents of the 63 barangays covered by their municipal governments were also supplied with rice by Mendoza’s office despite being no longer under its jurisdiction.
Radio reports on Friday stated that teams from the offices of two BARMM parliament members, Ishak Mastura and Naguib Sinarimbo, both lawyers, had also distributed rice and medicines for various ailments as Ramadhan humanitarian efforts, to residents of Sultan Kudarat in Maguindanao del Norte and Cotabato City in separate community service activities on Thursday.
Besides distributing rice to villagers from across Barangay Bulalo in Sultan Kudarat, Mastura’s office also reportedly provided three mosques in interior areas in the municipality then with solar lighting facilities and wall fans.
The office of Mastura, a scion of the noble Moro Mastura clan in Maguindanao del Norte, one of the five provinces in BARMM, had earlier entrusted P6 million to the administration of the Cotabato Regional Medical Center, earmarked for bills of poor Muslim, Christian and non-Moro indigenous patients confined to the institution, the largest in Cotabato City and is operating with the support of the Ministry of Health-BARMM.
A team from the office of Sinarimbo, who was local government minister of BARMM prior to his appointment last year as member of the Bangsamoro parliament by President Ferdinand Marcos, Jr., was also reported to have delivered on Thursday to a health center in Barangay Poblacion 5 in Cotabato City 400 boxes of medicines for common ailments and vitamin supplements for malnourished children in the area.
Barangay health workers had told reporters that the delivery of medicines by the public service team from Sinarimbo’s office was part its Tiyakap Bangsamoro Kalusugan, a health program being implemented in Cotabato City and in far-flung villages in the Bangsamoro SGA with the help of BARMM’s chief minister, Abdulrauf Macacua.
Sinarimbo’s office has provided 13,316 residents of different areas in Cotabato City and in Moro enclaves in Pahamuddin, one of the eight towns in the Bangsamoro SGA in Cotabato province that the BARMM parliament created last year via separate enabling measures, as Ramadhan pro-poor service engagements that started three days before the fasting season began on February 19.
Photo shows workers unloading rice from a delivery truck at one area in Barangay Bulalo in Sultan Kudarat, where a team from Mastura’s office had a Ramadhan public service engagement on Thursday. []
