(Aug.7, 2024, JFU) — The health ministry of the Bangsamoro region has started deploying barangay health workers in two Central Mindanao provinces from a pool of hundreds trained for field work in batches recently.
The Catholic Station DXMS quoted in a report on Wednesday morning the physician-ophthalmologist Kadil Monera Sinolinding, Jr., health minister of the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, as saying that they shall assign a total of 956 barangay health workers, or BHWs, in the adjoining Maguindanao del Sur and Maguindanao del Norte to decentralize health services in far-flung areas in both provinces.
Sinolinding said the BARMM government shall provide the BHWs with P4,000 monthly allowance each. Many of the newly-trained BHWs are either members, or supporters of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front and the Moro National Liberation Front that have separate peace agreements with Malacañang and whose leaders are together overseeing peace and development programs of different BARMM agencies.
The areas where the Ministry of Health-BARMM shall deploy newly-trained BHWs include the 63 Bangsamoro barangays in different towns in Cotabato province under Region 12. Residents of the 63 SGA barangays became constituents of the Bangsamoro government after they voted in favor of the inclusion of their domains in the core territory of BARMM during a plebiscite in 2019. (John Felix Unson)