COTABATO CITY — The 4-day Basic Geographic Information System (GIS) training-workshop for key personnel and technical staff of the Ministry of Environment, Natural Resources, and Energy – BARMM commences today, January 5, 2020, at Em Manor Hotel, Cotabato City to further improve the Ministry’s data assessment and management on the present energy situation of the Bangsamoro region.


Director Nasiri B. Abas of BARMM-MENRE Energy Management and Development Services emphasized in his opening message that utilization and management of our environment and natural resources is the one most critical areas to study for the sustainable development and progress of our Bangsamoro region.


“To effectively utilize our resources and protect Mother Nature, we need to employ tools and methodologies that will allow MENRE to collect, analyze, store, and disseminate information on the environment to facilitate and improve decision-making processes,” Director Abas said.


Engr. Al-Montazer S. Mandong, Chief Energy Regulation Officer, noted the importance of acquiring better methods of data collection and acknowledged that the GIS application is one of the best tools available.
“From the knowledge that we can gather from our improved data collection, we can create good policies in MENRE to promote better development for the BARMM”, Mandong said.


The 4-day training-workshop is being conducted by the International Organization for Migration (IOM) Cotabato Sub-Office headed by Hwahyun Kim, and with Al-Wahab Haron as Resource Facilitator; and it aims to arm MENRE employees from the Regional and Provincial Offices with knowledge of basic GIS operations, geo-referencing, plotting of geo-tagged, and other GIS tools and their uses for project implementation and planning.

MENRE visualizes an efficient and comprehensive energy development plan as it establishes capacity building activities for this cause. In this endeavor, IOM commits to continue its partnership with the Ministry in “laying the foundation of evidence-based and scientific planning”, and now through the ongoing and more Basic and Advanced GIS training-workshops.