Mamasapano advocates disaster mitigation

MAMASAPANO, Maguindanao --- The local government of this town under the leadership of Mayor Tahirodin Benzar A. Ampatuan is strongly advocating the program related to disaster prevention and mitigation.

Ampatuan said that  Mamasapano currently maintains a protection dike as flood prevention mechanism in the town’s low-lying barangays which extends to three to four kilometers.

“The previous administration of my father, who was the former mayor, built the protection dike in year 2007 which benefited our farmers here,” he said.

Ampatuan said the project is locally funded and at present they are just busy on the maintenance of the dike.

“We are currently repairing some parts of the dike so it won’t collapse,”
he said.

Ampatuan added that they often clean the surroundings of the dike and they always see to it that it is being regularly monitored by the responsible personnel of the municipal government.

“We are in fact targeting a total of eight kilometers of protection dike and we’ve only  built almost four kilometers so far, so there’s long way to go. We hope that the local government with the help of funding donors from the Congress and the Senate, we could soon complete the remaining kilometres to be constructed,” he said.

As part of disaster prevention and mitigation, Ampatuan said they will be planting “bamboo trees” along the river banks. “Bamboo trees prevent flooding by holding on to the soil.”

As heavy rains continue the past weeks and are contributory to flooding, most especially to the low-lying areas in this part of Mindanao, the mayor believes that planting bamboo trees could help reduce the number and severity of flash floods.

For us to determine whether the trees really can provide such robust defence, we first need to understand the role they play in soaking up excess rain water.

“Floods occur because the rain cannot soak into the soil fast enough. Instead, it runs rapidly over the surface of the land. Bamboo trees can be of help in this manner,” he said.

Ampatuan reiterated that while climate change is causing bigger and bigger storms, alterations to the environment, most especially to the ground surface, have been one of the major causes of the increased frequency of flooding incidents. (GILMHAR A. LAO & ANNE B. ACOSTA - MINDANAO EXPOSE’)