Marawi rebuild assured

President Duterte on Sunday assured that the rebuilding of wartorn Marawi City would proceed.

Duterte said the collection of billions of pesos in unpaid taxes enables the government to start rebuilding and improving the city to prevent another siege from happening again.

The Chief Executive said that nobody won the five-month war between government troops and the Maute Group in Marawi.

“So as not to repeat the kind of thing that we fought for about four months and at the expense of the lives of many people, Christians and Muslims alike,” he said. “We get nothing. Nobody won that war, not government.”

According to Duterte, despite the neutralization of many of the terrorists who laid siege to the city and killing the leadership, peace was not promoted during the war.

“We’re able to kill, how many? Terrorist and even? It does not promote peace in this world. We were just acting on a police punitive action,” Duterte said.

The President assured that with the money collected from the unpaid taxes, the rehabilitation of Marawi can start as soon as the clearing operations are over.

“I said, we collected so much taxes. I was informed by my revenue officials that there’s enough money to start laying down the foundation of the city again,” Duterte said.