City mayor calls for public vigilance

RISING AGAINST TERROR ---  Cotabato City Mayor Frances Cynthia Guiani-Sayadi speaks before members of the City Peace and Order Council as she called the body for an emergency meeting last September 4) on efforts to strengthen the city’s security against terrorism. (Photo courtesy of CIO)

COTABATO CITY --  The mayor here convened the City Peace and Order Council (CPOC) for an emergency meeting last September 4 to design steps that would strengthen security measures following the recent twin bombings in Isulan, Sultan Kudarat.

"I am requesting our authorities to impose strictly the No I.D (identification document), No Entry policy in all our checkpoints,” Mayor Frances Cynthia Guiani-Sayadi said during the CPOC meeting at the South Seas Complex attended by police and military officials, local officials, the private sector, and other city elected officials.

“We should not loosen our guard because terrorism is everywhere,” she stressed. “We need to work together to ensure our people are safe from terrorism.”

Sayadi also called on her constituents to be calm and watchful, especially when in public places.

“Again, I urge our people to remain calm but vigilant against the threat of terrorism, immediately report to authorities all suspicious persons or packages left unattended,” she said.

“I ask for your understanding, we need to strictly impose curfew hours,” Sayadi said, adding that village officials have vital roles in ensuring anyone coming into the village are known to them.

She asked people in populated public places like churches, mosques, markets, terminals, and plazas to remain watchful of people around them. “Terrorism will not succeed when all of us are working together against it,” the mayor said.

In the past, lawless elements from nearby Maguindanao province had repeatedly tried to set off improvised bombs in the city but alert police and military personnel operating under Task Force Kutawato foiled most of them.

The mayor also ordered the posting on social media of police and military hotline numbers that the public can use to report any suspicious persons or things in their midst.

Barely an hour after the September 3 bombing of an Isulan internet café, Sayadi ordered a lockdown of the entire Cotabato City to thwart possible diversionary bomb attacks. (NOEL PUNZALAN  & EDWIN FERNANDEZ,  PNA – COTABATO / MINDANAO EXPOSE’)