COTABATO CITY: The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner on Refugees (UNHCR) helped the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao put up its latest relief mission for internally-displaced people in Zamboanga City, ARMM officials said yesterday.
ARMM Governor Mujiv Hataman, who has been supervising since Tuesday the regional government’s relief operations in support of the humanitarian missions of the Zamboanga City crisis management committee led by Mayor Isabelle Climaco, said the UNHCR’s office in Cotabato City supported by providing hygiene kits for the evacuees.
“We are grateful to the UNHCR. The support its officials in Mindanao had extended to us will go a long way,” Hataman told The Star via mobile phone.
Hataman said the ARMM’s latest shipment of three truckloads from Cotabato City of relief supplies from the regional government arrived in Zamboanga City late Thursday and are now being dispersed to evacuees confined in temporary relief sites.
“There is no discrimination in the dispersal of the relief supplies. These are to distributed to evacuees regardless of whether they are Zamboanga City residents, or are from any of the ARMM’s Basilan, Sulu and Tawi-Tawi island provinces,” Hataman said.
The ARMM’s executive secretary, Laisa Alamia, said the latest shipment of relief good they dispatched to Zamboanga City will still be augmented with other humanitarian interventions member-agencies of the region’s newly-established Humanitarian Emergency Action and Response Team, or HEART contingent, can extend to evacuees.
The Philippine Star
