BARMM job applicants reach 160,000 mark

COTABATO CITY --- Applicants for various jobs at the fledging Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM) have reached some 160,000 as of  this posting, a regional official said last January 14.

The figure is culled from the online Bangsamoro Job Portal where some 2,000 jobs are up for grabs depending on the qualification of applicants, said Atty. Naguib Sinarimbo, minister of the Ministry of the Interior and Local Governor and concurrent regional spokesperson.

“An aptitude test and interview comprise the pre-employment procedure,” Sinarimbo said during a press conference here.

Recently, the region’s Ministry of Social Services and the Ministry of Labor and Employment have administered separate examinations to respective applicants, he said.

“Each ministry office has set up a timeline for applicants indicated at the job portal,” Sinarimbo said.

The BARMM has set up the online job portal on December 23, 2019, where prospective applicants for new positions can conveniently search and apply for jobs.

The job portal was created following the separation from service late last year of some 6,000 former workers from the defunct Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, which the 11-month-old BARMM replaced.

The BARMM is the result of the decades-old peace negotiations between the government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF).

A total of 41 of the 80-member Bangsamoro Transition Authority, the provisional lawmaking body of the BARMM, are MILF people.

Under the law, the BTA was organized to plot the direction of the BARMM pending the election of the new region's regular government officials in 2022. (NOEL PUNZALAN, PNA - COTABATO, MINDANAO EXPOSE')