BARMM News
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COTABATO CITY — Ministry of Basic, Higher and Technical Education (MBHTE) Deputy Minister Attorney Haron Meling presented the achievements of the ministry on Wednesday, May 25, 2022.
The presentation was one of the highlights of the re-launching of “Mga Panduwan nu MBHTE” Teleradyo Program held at the studio of the Bangsamoro Multimedia Network (BMN). (“Panduwan” is a Maguindanaon word which means “teaching” — noun.)
Also present at the event via Zoom were Civil Society Specialist Addie Unsi of The Asia Foundation (TAF) and his colleague Crisanto Cayon, the chief of party of TAF; Secretary General of the United Youth for Peace and Development (UNYPAD) Yusoph Lumambas; Dr. Mohammad Taha Pendaliday of the Bangsamoro Communication Network (BCN); and BMN Executive Director Faydiyah Samanodi Akmad.
In the BMN interview with Meling, he said MBHTE has four sub-sectors. These are the Basic Education, Higher Education, Technical Education Skills and Development, and the Madaris Education which made the BARMM Government unique among the 17 regions of the country because of its Madaris Education, a product of the Bangsamoro struggle.
“The four components or sub-sectors of MBHTE are Basic Education, that is what the DepEd (Department of Education) represents,;Higher Education at the national level is what represents the Commission on Higher Education (CHED); and Technical Education is also similar to the national level of the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA),” Meling explained.
Meling added that the uniqueness of the Bangsamoro region among the country’s 17 regions is that it has Madaris Education or Islamic Education because it is what gives identity to Muslims and if there is no Islamic and Arabic education, the BARMM region will not be different from the 16 regions.
He further said the education code has been finalized and is already contained in Bangsamoro Parliament Bill No. 18. What the regional lawmakers currently doing now is drafting the Implementing Rules and Regulation (IRR) of the Bangsamoro Education Code (BEC), and already 90% to 95% complete.
BARMM Education ministry has many programs and services
Meling also said that experts such as DepEd, Attorney Bong Montesa, and some foreign consultant provided their respective vital inputs to formulate the BEC and its IRR, as they contributed much on the formulation of the code.
In a message from Abdullah “Junn” Salik, Jr., directorate general of MBHTE Basic Education, he thanked the patrons of the ministry’s program “Mga Panduwan nu MBHTE 2” and the partners of the teleradyo program.
In BMN’s interview with TAF’s Unsi, he said that the FORWARD Bangsamoro project or so-called Democratic Governance Assistance Project (DGAP) supported by USAID (United States International Agency for Development) and implemented by TAF is part of the continuation of their office’s partnership with the Bangsamoro as a whole in sustaining the peace process.
It also has the capacity of a governance program. He said the program also aims to strengthen local governance in the Bangsamoro through capacity building to make the units of various agencies more effective and efficient through the capacity of the programs and its development of systems and where this will happen with the cooperation of various ministries and also with the guidance of the BARMM Chief Minister Ahod Balawag “Al-Haj Murad” Ebrahim.
Unsi added that it is important to increase communications through the Panduwan nu MBHTE teleradyo program with the goal to stregnthen the dissemination of information on the activities of MBHTE.
In a message from Lumambas from the Bangsamoro youth, he said that since UNYPAD registered with the Security and Exchange Commission (SEC) in 2004, it has focused on peacebuilding and education programs. UNYPAD was also organized to provide the youth with training to equip and enhance their capability.
UNYPAD is grateful to MBHTE under the leadership of Minister Mohagher M. Iqbal for the trust given to UNYPAD. Lumambas also thanked BARMM Chief Minister Ebrahim.
He added that the purpose of this TAF-supported program is to convey what is happening at MBHTE with good programs in all areas of the Bangsamoro, students, and parents of children who are studying.
He pointed out that UNYPAD is non-partisan and whose goal is real unity, real peace, and having genuine development of the Bangsamoro, Christians, IP’s and Chinese or other races living within the Bangsamoro.
Akmad, in her message during the program, shared that BMN is a group of young professionals who formed and combined their skills, and knowledge about multimedia work, and it was formed after the Bangsamoro Assembly called by the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) in 2017 which was attended by about one million participants from different parts of the country to support the Bangsamoro peace process.
MBHTE’s “Mga Panduwan” radio program aired on various media
“January 1, 2018 the group realized to form and named the groups that was part of the working force of the Bangsamoro assembly to focus on communication, and that is where the name Bangsamoro Multimedia Network or BMN was formed and in 2021 it was formally registered with the SEC,” said Akmad.
Akmad said that BMN is with the communications media team that will focus on capturing the events on the interpellation of Bangsamoro Organic Law in the Senate of the Philippines and House of Congress until the result of the Bicameral Conference comes out and is announced via live streamed by BMN, the passage of the Bangsamoro Organic Law or RA 11054.
She also said that the role of BMN Inc. is clear in the Mga Panduwan nu MBHTE program, “at the very beginning of this program it was seen its support in the technical working force, news writing, technical operation in live streaming.”
Akmad also asks the education stakeholders to listen to the Mga Panduwan nu MBHTE program because it will highlight knowledge about the Ministry’s programs and services.
In the last part of the program, Pendaliday said that BCN also played a big role in the first wave of Mga Panduwan nu MBHTE, the pandemic caused by Covid-19 affected everyone including the education sector, because of this including BCN, they used two-way radio or VHF as communication in the delivery of Adaptive Learning Materials (ALM) or modules for students.