THE Chief Executive ordered Task Force Bangon Marawi to fast-track the war-ravaged locality’s rehabilitation, four years after he ordered its bombardment to bury the terrorist group that supposedly controls the city.
President Rodrigo Duterte, in his final State of the Nation Address (SONA), ordered the task force he himself created to finish the rehabilitation program, but hinted it will be “a race against time” for the city from where most Muslim traders in Manila come from.
“Rebuilding of Marawi is still not yet complete. To Task Force Bangon Marawi, we need to race against time,” the President said before members of the Senate, House of Representatives and other prominent officials in attendance.
“We need to put in the necessary work to rehabilitate the war-torn city and bring its families back home,” he added.
Looking back in the summer of 2017, Duterte ordered the Armed Forces of the Philippines to seize Marawi City which was then considered a bailiwick of the terrorist Maute Group. Residents were driven out of the city before it started a fierce battle from May to October 2017. In November of the same year, what was left of Marawi City was “ground zero.”
Malacañang earlier released records which hinted at a measly 18-percent completion of a government project designed to construct houses as residents in the area literally lost everything — their homes, their livelihoods and their dreams built in the decimated city in Lanao del Sur.
Task Force Bangon Marawi head Eduardo del Rosario, however, said that the city’s rehabilitation was 68-percent finished in June 2021 from 65 percent in May 2021.