THE Philippine Sports Commission recently formed a three-member task force, whose job is to search and tap young and talented but underprivileged swimmers, including Muslims from the Mindanao region.

Ramon Roque, a retired swimmer who is taking timeout from his present job as deputy secretary general of the House of Representatives, said he will immediately buckle down to work with the two other members of the task force, former three-time Asian Games medalist Susan Papa and lawyer Luz Arzaga-Mendoza, the Philippine record holder in the 100-meter and 200-meter backstroke.

The task force will be known as the PSC Aquatics Task Force, according to Roque, who said that they will travel to all the regions of the country to look for the best swimmers they can find and enter them into competitions in Manila.

Roque noted that in the past, most of the country’s strong swimmers hailed from Mindanao and were the ones winning a lot of medals.

Roque said he hopes that the program that the PSC has put in place would hopefully be integrated with the programs being undertaken by the Philippine Amateur Swimming Association.

“The objective is to select, train and develop. We hope to make this happen in a few weeks,” said Roque, who won medals in the Asian Age-Group Championships when he was 12 years old. Peter Atencio