COTABATO CITY, Philippines – Bracing for their avowed smooth leadership transition, incumbent officials of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) inaugurated Monday their newly acquired modern bus cum mobile clinic, setting its maiden service to traumatized villagers in a distant town in Maguindanao.

The brand-new bus is said to be the longest unit in Mindanao and custom-built by a renowned car-making company to boost the trailblazing health services of the administration of ARMM acting Governor Ansaruddin Alonto Adiong.

ARMM Executive Secretary Naguib Sinarimbo, representing Adiong, declared a brief break in their regional Cabinet meeting at the regional government complex here Monday morning to inaugurate the unit with the full attendance of heads of agencies, including Dr. Kadil Sinolinding Jr., the region’s health secretary.

“This (mobile clinic) will tremendously beef up our outreach medical and health services. We have already penetrated villages in Mapun and Turtle Islands (in Tawi-Tawi) in unprecedented fashion…We can certainly do more now,” Sinolinding said.

The incumbent administration bought the unit at P12 million out of the special purpose fund of the Office of the Regional Governor (ORG) through a Memorandum of Agreement with a joint supplying company last June.

The supplier turned over the unit last weekend after custom-building it with complete medical facilities, including X-ray machines, ECG, laboratory facilities for urine and blood analysis, dental equipment, and high-tech microscope, among others, that virtually make up a “moving hospital,” Secretary Sinarimbo said.

Sinolinding said the mobile clinic will be operated by physicians, a dentist, nurses, and midwives alongside paramedics with complete medical supplies.

The maiden services of the “mobile hospital” will be rendered this month in Pagalungan, a distant town in Maguindanao, where hundreds of residents had been frequently affected, if not traumatized by both man-made and natural calamities, according to Sinarimbo.

The acquisition of the Germany-built mobile clinic would form “part of the legacies” the Adiong administration is leaving for the people of the autonomous region, he said.

Also, at Monday’s ARMM Cabinet meeting, the incumbent ARMM officials finalized measures for their avowed turnover of leadership to officers-in-charge (OICs) to be appointed by President Aquino pursuant to Republic Act 10153.

The law, which synchronizes the August 8, 2011 ARMM elections with the 2013 midterm polls, has been declared constitutional by the Supreme Court (SC) in its decision promulgated last September 18.

The SC gave petitioners challenging the constitutionality of the law 15 days to file their motion for reconsideration (MR).

Pending the SC final decision, Adiong has ordered his Cabinet members and heads of agencies to “continue delivering services in the best fashion to sustain our operational momentum.”

It was learned that the Social Weather Station released on October 10 the results of its July survey showing that 63 percent of the residents in the ARMM were “satisfied” with the performance of the incumbents, with only 18 percent “dissatisfied,” for a “very good mark of +45.”