PARANG, Philippines – Amid anxieties among sea traffic stakeholders
due to the tsunami scare, the typhoon-spared Polloc Freeport in this panoramic town has been hyped
as an alternative port of call for domestic and international vessels by the
present Autonomous Region in
Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) administration.
ARMM Executive Secretary Naguib Sinarimbo said the Polloc Freeport
is a strategic option for shippers and international liners with the current
port traffic situation in the country’s premier harbors.
Sinarimbo, speaking at the first anniversary celebration of the
ARMM’s Freeport here recently, said world’s best situated ports are those built
behind coves and nook-shielded for natural protection of vessels and their
cargoes from big waves.
He said such characterizes the Polloc Freeport, nautically
situated behind Bonggo Island and the Parang Bay inlet which the region has
declared an economic zone.
The port’s freshwater refilling station, deemed “best in quality”
by docking vessels’ crew, flows in from the Ambal River headwater in Bumbaran,
which used to be part of the former Camp Abubakar of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front
(MILF).
Sinarimbo said foreign development partners, including the Japan International Cooperation
Agency (JICA), have helped improved the port’s facilities in
complying with new international security and terminal facility standards.
Maguindanao
Rep. Simeon Datumanong had the port built in 1977 in collaboration with the
then Ministry of Highways,
when he was Commissioner of the Region 12 Autonomous Government, now replaced
by the ARMM governance.
The regional wharf was declared the first Freeport in the ARMM and
Mindanao in March, 2010, by ARMM acting Gov. Ansaruddin Alonto Adiong, who was
represented in the celebration rites here by Sinarimbo.
Port
manager Moharrim Mohammad said Polloc is spared from the country’s
maritime records of tsunami risk areas, not having been hit by huge tidal waves
that went with an Intensity 7.6 earthquake in Central and Southern Mindanao on
Aug. 17, 1976.
Mohamad noted the rising domestic and international sea transport
traffic in the country in the aftermath of the tsunami and earthquake in Japan.
He said that at 35,647, incidence of domestic ship calls in
southern Mindanao ports, posts twice as high as that of Manila harbors at
17,368.
Northern
Mindanao has 17,368 incidence of docking, while foreign vessels mooring in
southern Mindanao numbered in recent quarters to 2,193 – second to that of
Manila’s 4,973, he added.
source:bpi-armm
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