COTABATO CITY, Philippines – Instead of being anxious or distressed over floodwaters affecting several areas in this region, government authorities and church leaders have urged residents in Maguindanao and this city to take advantage of the situation to earn extra income by using the huge body of water lily and hyacinth that clog the pathway of the Rio Grande de Mindanao under a vital bridge linking this city to the rest of Southern Philippines.

“The influx during rainy days of water hyacinths into the river path under the Cotabato City’s Delta Bridge from higher grounds in Maguindanao, North Cotabato, and Bukidnon is a ‘menace’ that we can harness for extra livelihood as proven locally and abroad,” Engineer Ting Sumagayan of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) governance said.

Sumagayan, incumbent ARMM public works secretary, floated a bright economic side of the “menace” after local engineers admitted over the weekend that it would take at least two months to remove, under the Delta Bridge, the huge body of water hyacinths already accumulated into about 10 hectares in size.

The city government here has allotted P4.2 million last week for both mechanized and manual removal of the heavy magnitude of water lilies, admitting though that assistance from higher authorities is badly needed to stop the swelling of clogged river water into the low-lying 11 villages in this city, and some nearby towns in Maguindanao.

Local disaster risk reduction council officials said the flooding, spawned by continued torrential rains and aggravated by the clogging of river ways, already affected 300,000 families, some 3,000 of them displaced, and damaged almost P500 million worth of properties and agricultural crops in the 23 villages here and 11 towns in Maguindanao.

Cotabato Archbishop Orlando Quevedo, chairman of the Mindanao River Basin Development Council, which the Arroyo administration had created to dredge the Rio Grande de Mindanao, has admitted helplessness in the “menace” due to lack of funds for several months.

Pending lack of national government funds for the problem, Quevedo has batted for the “bayanihan” approach among public servants and residents to remove the water lilies, and use the material for handicraft-making venture and other enterprises.

“The long range plan is how to stop the water hyacinths from going down to Cotabato. We are looking at a technology just what like China did with its water hyacinth problem in the Yangtze River,” Quevedo was quoted as saying over the weekend.