COTABATO CITY, Philippines – The Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) is willing to partake with the equally poor Caraga Region or Region 13 a share from the lucrative job openings offered to an ARMM delegation by Malaysian authorities recently.

Caraga, classified lately by the national government as the nation’s poorest region, deserves a share of the glad tidings, ARMM Executive Secretary Naguib Sinarimbo said Wednesady, referring to the 40,000 job openings at the Malaysian Federal Land Development Authority (FELDA).

FELDA senior officials received an eight-member ARMM team led by Sinarimbo in Kuala Lumpur last week, and disclosed the need for 40,000 new workers in expanding its 853,313-hectare farms of oil palm, rubber, sugar cane, and other value crops now employing some 112,635 settler-workers.

Suhaimi Zainuddin, deputy director-general of FELDA’s administration and finance, said they set aside 42,173-hectare as area for 112,635 settler-families involving some 1.6 million individuals.

Each of the settler-family, assigned with five-hectare farm each, receives an average monthly income of 4,195 ringgits in rubber planting, and 3,419 ringgits in oil palm farming, records from FELDA showed.

Zainuddin said that in their expansion program, they would give preference for Filipino workers he described as obedient and industrious, and that qualified job-seekers from the ARMM will have a share.

In a separate meeting also in Kuala Lumpur, Sinarimbo conveyed the FELDA expressed offer to Malaysian Human Resources Deputy Minister Maznah Mazlan, who concurred the offer and assured her agency’s support.

In another development, some 40 civil society groups are now rallying government efforts aimed at reducing poverty incidence in the country, following their participation in a planning workshop on partnership-building conducted in this city by the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD).

Hadja Pombaen Karon-Kader, acting secretary of the DSWD office for the ARMM, said the 40 civil society organizations (CSOs) through their participating leaders assured to help in the evaluation and monitoring of poverty alleviation programs especially the conditional cash transfer, known as the Pantawid Pamilya Pilipino Program (4Ps).

The seminar-workshop held in this city on July 30, during which government technical people and their counterparts in the CSOs, formulated mechanisms for participatory governance involving all stakeholders in the implementation of poverty-alleviating interventions.

According to DSWD statistics, ARMM has a total of 261,951 eligible 4Ps beneficiaries as of June 2011.

National and local DSWD officials have admitted the need for continuous verification process of list of beneficiaries amid persistent grapevine talks that well-off families related mostly to local political camps have been registered in the 4Ps.

In his recent State-of-the-Region Address (SoNA), President Aquino said his administration has already registered 2.3 million 4Ps beneficiaries and the figure will be made three million by the end of this year.

The Chief Executive insisted that the conditional cash transfer program has helped alleviate the pangs of poverty in the countryside by providing each family with three infant children P1,400 monthly subsidy.

Where P900 of the amount goes to the school needs of the three children and the remaining P500 is allotted for their regular medical checkups.