MANILA, 11 August 2003 — Once when Ibnu Hajar Turabin told representatives of Overseas Filipino Worker (OFW) cooperatives in the southern region of Mindanao that he was from Basilan, he could read the meeting participants mouthing the words Abu Sayyaf — the most notorious export of the backward province.

Unknown to most, however, Basilan has more than just the Abu Sayyaf Group.

The 56-year old Turabin, or “Ibs” to his friends, runs one of three OFW cooperatives in the province, the Salam OFW Multipurpose Cooperative of Basilan Province.

The others are the Zamboanga-Basilan-Sulu-Tawi-Tawi Multipurpose Cooperative and the Women OFW Medical Workers Multipurpose Cooperative of Basilan Province (WOMB). All of them are under the umbrella of the United OFW Cooperative Federation of Western Mindanao in nearby Zamboanga City.

Salam has a small canteen for students in front of the Basilan State College in the capital city of Isabela.

“Unfortunately, our cooperative’s efforts were disturbed by the operations of the Abu Sayyaf,” Turabin said in a recent interview with Arab News.

He said the Salam cooperative was accredited as a Public Employment Service Office (PESO) by the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) and can now help in setting up its members in small scale businesses.

The cooperative tries to make returning to Philippine society easier for Basilan’s 30,000 overseas OFWs, roughly one-tenth of the province’s population.

At the moment, though, Turabin said all activity has ceased in the vicinity of the cooperative’s building, all because of the Abu Sayyaf.

But Turabin expressed hope that activity would soon resume, especially since Representative Gerry Salapuddin has filed a bill that seeks to convert the 4,000-student school into a state university.

To augment the canteen, Turabin has proposed the setting up of an internet café at the cooperative’s premises.

“The 4,000 students at the Basilan State College have nowhere else to go anyway,” he said.

Turabin said the internet café would be very successful since it would be the first in Basilan, the nearest being in Zamboanga City.

Turabin has started negotiations with the Economic Resource Center for Overseas Filipinos (ERCOF) to start off the café and in the process computerize Salam’s operations.

Salam is also an accredited PESO, so Turabin said he would be able to help returning OFWs invest their earnings in small businesses and enter the informal labor sector.

It was because of this accreditation that Salam cooperative was able to hold a jobs fair for prospective OFWs.

In addition, they were also hosted teams from the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) and the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA) to provide mobile passporting and documentation services for OFWs in Basilan.

Turabin, once an OFW, sees the need to help OFWs invest their savings into viable business enterprises since he experienced the hardship an OFW goes through.

“Hindi naman habang-buhay ito (This will not last forever),” he said.