On March 9, Monday, I took a 600-horsepower speedboat from Sandakan, Sabah to get to a group of six small islands called Turtle Islands which belong to the Province of TawiTawi.
During low tide when the sea is calm, the skipper of the speedboat owned by Turtle Islands Mayor Muhammad Faizal Jamalul said he could reach Sandakan from the main island of Taganak in 25 minutes.
It took 15 hours for the Philippine Cost Guard vessel to reach Turtle Islands from Zamboanga City while the powerful speedboat which I used could reach the capital town of Bongao in 3 to 4 hours depending on the condition of the sea.
After a short welcome ceremony in the main island of Taganak where the Turtle Islands Municipal Hall is located, I and the MinDA Beauty and Bounty of Mindanao Media Team who sailed with the Coast Guard vessel from Zamboanga City, proceeded to Bagua Island, the natural habitat of the Green Sea Turtle which is uninhabited except for a team composed of wardens and job order workers of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources.
I spent the night with the wardens in Bagua Island and earned the distinction of being the first Cabinet Secretary to ever set foot and sleep in the island.
It is not really the desire to earn the distinction of being the “first” to travel to the island which prompted me to take the trip to the Turtle Islands.
My decision to take the long journey to the farthest southern island of the Philippines was part of the advocacy I embraced as a government official – to reach out to the forgotten Filipinos in the remotest parts of the country to listen to their stories and know how government could make them feel that they are not neglected.
The trip to Taganak on March 9 and 10 completed my journey from the northernmost island of the country, Itbayat in Batanes to the southernmost islands.
In Itbayat, one of the islands of Batanes province which I visited when I was Secretary of Agriculture, farmers grow Garlic with nary a help from government for ages. They do not even like the idea of availing of the loan programs of government.
In Taganak, people use the Philippine peso and the Malaysian Ringgit as their accepted currencies and they only get to travel out of the islands when the vessels sail once a month to Zamboanga City.
They could only communicate with the world outside the island by climbing up a hill in Taganak to grab the faint communications signal from Malaysia’s CELCOM.
Next week, the MinDA Media Team will feature the Turtle Islands in the Beauty and Bounty of Mindanao social media advocacy to show the hidden face of the Southern Islands long perceived as troubled lands.
There will be two episodes, the first to focus on the 12,000 people living in the six islands comprising the Turtle Islands Group and the second will be on the endangered Green Sea Turtle who lay their eggs and breed in the islands, especially in the uninhabited Bagua Island.
(Maps of the Philippines, Batanes and Turtle Island Groups downloaded from Google. Photos of the Garlic produced by the farmers of Itbayat Island, Batanes were taken by the Biyaheng Bukid team of the Department of Agriculture while photos of Taganak and the Green Sea Turtles were taken by the MinDA Media Team for the Beauty and Bounty of Mindanao advocacy program.)
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