Govt, MILF join hands to dispose of unexploded ordnance

The Philippine government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) have started mapping out plans to dispose of at least 11 unexploded ordnance (UXOs) in Shariff Aguak town in Maguindanao province. The Coordinating Committees on the Cessation of Hostilities (CCCH) of both sides are also working with the International Monitoring Team (IMT) in the effort, the MILF said. "The discovery of some 11 UXOs was reported by the United Nations Children Fund (UNICEF) to the IMT and CCCH (Wednesday)," the MILF said on its website Thursday. UNICEF and the Community and Families Services Inc. (CFSI) received information from local residents of the UXOs near an elementary school in Lapok village in Shariff Aguak. “We would be grateful if you could coordinate the removal and disposal of these objects as soon as possible in lieu of the security threat it poses to the children and locals in the community," the MILF quoted a UNICEF communication to the IMT. The MILF also said its information showed the locations of the discovered UXOs were already marked and being secured by the people in the community. It added the CCCHs and IMT will work closely with the Explosive and Ordnance Teams (EOD) of the Army’s 6th Infantry Division for the safe disposal of the UXOs. UXOs are explosive ordnance that have been primed, armed, or otherwise prepared for use. They may have been fired but did not explode due to a malfunction. UXOs also hindered the return of the internally displaced persons (IDPs) to their communities of origin. The discovery of these UXOs proved valid the claims of the IDPs of security threat emanating from these objects. MILF had repeatedly expressed belief that the UXOs were remnants of the air and artillery strikes by the military from 2008 to 2009, after the aborted singing of the GRP–MILF Memorandum of Agreement on Ancestral Domain (MOA-AD). Recently, the government and MILF signed in Malaysia the Guidelines for the Joint Mines Clearance Program to be conducted by the Philippine Campaign to Ban Land Mine (PCBL) and the Swiss Foundation for Mines Action (FSD) in collaboration with the GRP–MILF CCCH and IMT. — RJAB Jr./RSJ, GMANews.TV