Bringing JOY to the highlands

http://www.theborneopost.com/2013/01/06/bringing-joy-to-the-highlands/

by Chang Yi. Posted on January 6, 2013, Sunday

JOANNA Joy is not only the MAS agent in Bario but also the owner of a large Bario pineapple garden and a homestay business.

PINEAPPLES FOR LUNCH: Kelabit friends bringing Bario pineapples for the afternoon meal prepared at the homestay. All dishes are individually cooked for each group.

A mother of two young adults who have been educated in Kuala Lumpur — one already working and the other completing his studies — she has, in response to the call of familial duty, returned to the Bario Highlands to look after her aged mother and adopted parents.

When she was a little girl, her parents allowed their relative to adopt her. So, she has two sets of parents like many of the indigenous people of Sarawak.

Joanna who had her early education in Bario, studied in Institut Teknologi Mara after completing secondary school. Upon graduation, she worked and got married and then found a job outside Bario – the usual story of young Kelabits. However, the highlands had been beckoning to her.

Her children are now fairly independent and chasing their own dreams. Her daughter has graduated with an MA in biotechnology from University Malaya and her son is studying to become an IT programmer from ITM.

The conditions were, thus, right for her to return and contribute to her hometown in the state’s scenic highlands.

Besides looking after her aging mother and adoptive parents, Joanna has put her time to good use by helping her people wherever she can. Presently, she is also holding down two jobs — as operational manager of Bario Airport and MAS agent.

She said she is not going to retire yet because she still has many dreams to fulfill. A few years ago, she started a pineapple farm on a piece of land near the airport. And not long ago, she opened a homestay business.

When friends from West Malaysia and overseas visit her, she is happy to show them her pineapple farm. She planted the young suckers with the help of her relatives, and is now harvesting as many as 10 to 15 fruits a day — sometimes more. Any surplus will be made into jam.

Challenging problems

However, Joanna has problems using her food processor to make jam. When the Bario dam is low, there is virtually no electricity for the community. And since power supply is dependent on the water level in the dam, it is not everyday that she can use her food processor to make jam. Fortunately, there is a generator at the secondary school in the area which she can rely on when the need arises.

HOME-MADE: Joanna’s home-made pineapple jam.

Joanna also faces a serious problem in her pineapple business. Sending the fruits by air to Miri is very expensive. She sells her pineapples at RM2 per kilo to passengers and relatives.

Malaysian Airlines allows free luggage of 10kg. Passengers are weighed before checking in with their hand luggage. Each pineapple easily weighs up to 3 kilos. If someone buys a box of pineapples, he or she may have to pay an extra RM30 surcharge because of excess baggage.

Relatives bringing a pineapple or two for their family or friends would usually wait for a friendly passenger to help hand-carry the fruits for them to Miri. That’s the way of the people in the highlands – always ready to help each other.

Besides pineapples, Joanna’s family also plant rice. If she cannot farm the land herself, she will ask other padi planters for help — perhaps on a sharecropping basis.

In the past, her parents had no problem planting enough rice to feed the whole family for a period of two years. Will she allow her land to lay fallow for the next few years?

In fact, Joanna is having to face many issues related to growing rice and pineapples in the highlands. Can she get a grant to start a pineapple jam cottage industry? She has been sourcing for help from friends and government agents but to no avail so far.

She sells her home-made jam at counters that are open to her but she has to remember not to over-produce because her refrigerator cannot operate 24 hours a day due to limited electricity supply in Bario.

Moreover, many of the better educated younger women who bemoan the lack of basic utilities – adequate electricity supply, for example – in the area have left to find work elsewhere.

Airport Homestay

WITH VISITORS: Joanna (right) and her visitors in front of her homestay.

Homestay business in Bario is irregular. Things usually pick up only during festive celebrations.

However, for holiday-makers – both local and foreign – homestay accommodation and related facilities are available in Bario as well as nearby villages which offer attractions like kayaking and salt mines.

One popular setup is Joanna’s Bario Airport Homestay which offers good food. The chef frequently comes up with “very refreshing dishes.” Fresh talipia from Joanna’s pond next to the homestay is available everyday!

Dessert consists of a huge plate of freshly-plucked pineapples, and vegetables bought from the surrounding homesteads although green-thumbed Joanna grows most of her own vegetables.

Joanna Joy is a shinning example of an enterprising Kelabit woman who meets her challenges with plenty of cheers. If the challenges she is facing can be overcome, many younger highlanders would probably stay back to work and help boost the local economy.

With plantation roads linking Bario to Marudi, the future looks good for those Kelabits hoping to return home after their retirement — and even for the younger ones after their education outside the highlands.

According to a young government officer in Marudi, there might be more jobs in Bario in the future as more businesses can be opened up. With so many possibilities, the rural-urban migration which has been affecting many Bario families, could see a reversal.

Unesco plans to preserve Kelabit and Bidayuh under programme

http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2012/6/9/nation/11448659&sec=nation

Saturday June 9, 2012

SIBU: Unesco is working to preserve the Kelabit and Bidayuh languages in Sarawak.
State Welfare, Women and Family Development Minister Datuk Fatimah Abdullah said the organisation was undertaking the two projects under its “Endangered Languages” programme.

The two languages were selected because they belonged to minority indigenous communities.
“Not many Bidayuh and Kelabit speak their language in its pure form these days.

“This is especially so in inter-racial marriages where the families opt to speak Bahasa Malaysia or English at home,” she told reporters after opening the National Early Childhood Intervention Conference here, last night.

Fatimah said other minority native groups in the state also risked losing their languages if no effort was taken to preserve and promote them.

She said many of the Kelabit had migrated to towns or urban areas and, in their new environment, the tendency was for them to speak only a little of the original language.

She noted that the Dayak Bidayuh National Association (DBNA) in Kampung Bunuk, Kuching, was taking concrete steps to preserve the Bidayuh language by getting trained teachers to teach preschoolers to write and speak in the language at a nursery.

The Unesco website states that about half of more than the 6,000 languages spoken today across the globe will disappear by the end of this century if nothing is done to protect them.

Bernama

 

 

Idris: New economic activities will stem tide of rural-urban migration

http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2011/11/24/sarawak/9963728&sec=sarawak

Thursday November 24, 2011

By ZORA CHAN: zora@thestar.com.my

KUALA LUMPUR: New economic activities need to be created in rural Sarawak, otherwise more youths will move to urban areas.

Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department Datuk Seri Idris Jala said areas like the highlands of Bario and Ba’Kelalan today saw a lower population as many had migrated to urban areas, leaving mainly the old to farm the land.

“Mass rural-urban migration among the younger generation is a problem in Sarawak and other parts of the country.

“We have to think how to get the young to stay on. We do not have the answers yet but hopefully we’ll have some solutions by early next year,” he said.

Seeking a solution: Idris at the dialogue session with community leaders and elders from Ba’Kelalan and Bario in Kuala Lumpur on Tuesday.

Among others, the Rural Transformation Programme (RTP) would address this phenomenon by providing new economic activities as well as basic infrastructure in rural areas, Idris said during a dialogue with a delegation from Bario and Ba’Kelalan here on Tuesday.

The 32-member delegation comprised Lun Bawang and Kelabit community leaders and village elders, led by former Bukit Mas MP Mutang Tagal.

Earlier, the visitors and Lawas MP Datuk Henry Sum Agong paid a courtesy call on Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak, to thank the Federal Government for upgrading an abandoned logging road from Long Luping to Ba’Kelalan using soil stabilisation technology supplied by Hanayin Engineering Sdn Bhd.

The RM52mil project, spanning 75km, was completed in two years by the army under the Jiwa Murni outreach programme.

Idris, whose home town is Bario, said under the RTP, the Government would improve basic infrastructure like roads, water and electricity supply in the interior.

“With better infrastructure, it will be easier and more economical for farmers to sell their produce at the nearest town or city.”

Citing examples, he said Bario was also famed for its pineapples but it was difficult to sell them elsewhere in the absence of roads linking the highlands to the nearest town and neighbouring villages in Ba’Kelalan.

He welcomed suggestions from villagers to start new economic activities like empurau breeding and rubber plantations in the highlands, adding that such ventures had taken off successfully in Long Peluan, Ulu Baram.

Idris promised to push for the implementation of the Ba’Kelalan-Bario road so that folk in the area would enjoy better connectivity.

During the dialogue session, among others, Rurum Kelabit Sarawak vice-president Dr Philip Raja urged Idris’ ministry to consider turning the state’s as an agropol for the northern region.

He said the idea came about a few years ago from former Miri Resident Datuk Ose Murang and to date, no budget had been given towards this.

“The proposal also aims at transforming Bario into a town or semi-urban area,” he said, adding that such development would also boost tourism in the pristine highlands.

Brain drain continues to put the country on the losing end

http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2010/11/2/sarawak/7339395&sec=sarawak

Tuesday November 2, 2010

Brain drain continues to put the country on the losing end

By YU JI
yuji@thestar.com.my


REPORTS on the brain drain come and go every so often, but behind all the headlines and letters to the editors, there exists a real problem that will take generations to remedy.

First off, let it be clear, there can be no solving of the brain drain. The exodus of human capital is part and parcel of globalisation. It is the result of universities with international reach, the Internet and borders that are getting more porous by the day.

Indeed, when so much economic talk these days is focused on free trade agreements and foreign direct investment through which commodities and money move so freely, the very idea of nationality erodes.

This is not to say, however, that Malaysia’s brain drain should not be tackled.

In February this year, a report based on Parliamentary proceedings stated that between March 2008 and August 2009, about 305,000 Malaysians left the country for jobs elsewhere.

The figure was almost double the number of Malaysians who left in 2007.

Throughout the years, Singapore has been the recipient of some of the brightest and most hard-working workers from its neighbouring country. An estimate a few years ago claimed that about 40% of those leaving Malaysia headed for the tiny island nation.

Other countries that Malaysians prefer are Australia, New Zealand, the United States and Britain.

On a smaller scale, the brain drain happens inter-state as well.

The Sarawak Progressive Democratic Party has set up clubs in Johor, where the party says almost 40,000 Ibans are working.

Meanwhile, thousands of rural Sarawakians continue to arrive in the state’s towns and cities every year, looking for better salaries.

Take Bario, the fertile Kelabit Highlands, as an example. Well known for its rice, the area’s youths, however, have left in droves over the past three years.

Its rice production is in decline. Rice fields have been abandoned while some locals have started importing rice from nearby villages.

Even Padiberas Nasional Bhd, the country’s regulator and distributor of rice in the industry, said it faced great difficulties in promoting the award-winning Bario rice as the export volume was inconsistent.

To counter the migration of youths, farmers left behind in Bario have been employing Indonesian workers.

Multiply Bario’s situation by a few hundred and you have Malaysia’s scenario – talent leaving, influx of low-skilled foreigners.

The country’s policymakers have never denied there is a brain drain, yet they also seem to resist taking drastic measures. Some politicians have spoken up in support of a true 1Malaysia, but then balked at the smallest sign of trouble from certain groups.

What brain drain comes down to is opportunity. Simple as that.

National Heart Association Malaysia president Prof Dr Sim Kui Hian, rumoured to be a state election candidate, is among a few who had been enormously successful overseas, but eventually returned to Malaysia.

“When people ask me why I came back – mind you I left a better paying job overseas – I say it’s because I miss my laksa, my kolo mee.

“But when I really think about it sometimes, the reason why I’ve stayed back is because of the prestige. I like the challenge of heading a cardiac unit here (in Kuching),” he told StarMetro recently.

Dr Sim is a founding member of the Sarawak General Hospital’s Cardiac Unit, which is making a move to the Sarawak Heart and Cancer Institute in Samarahan.

Had there been no cardiac unit to be set up here, would Dr Sim have returned?

Why should talented people stay put anywhere when better, more challenging and more rewarding opportunities abound somewhere else? Even if you don’t feel that way, would you deny your child such an opportunity?

Opportunity is dependent on equality. The rate of the brain drain can only increase further if a disadvantaged social environment continues to be felt in a world made smaller by great leaps in technological progress.

The Gini Coefficient Index is the internationally-accepted standard to measure inequality, usually used to estimate the difference between the rich and the poor.

It’s saddening to note that the index shows that Malaysians have been growing apart in wealth in the past decade.

It indicates a trend where the rich are getting richer while the poor remain poor, or make so little progress on income levels that any increase is negated by inflation.

Surely, one of the best ways to improve on this would be to introduce the much-talked-about but long-delayed minimum wage scheme.

You see, setting a minimum wage will also positively adjust salaries up the job ladder. It will likely offset the brain drain to some extent.

The minimum wage scheme wasn’t introduced in Budget 2011, but a council was founded which would look into how the scheme could be implemented.

The worry, though, is whether such much-needed efforts will come too little too late. Much has been said about Malaysia falling into the middle-income trap.

Putting targets on higher income levels is a noble aim. And there is no reason to assume the country can’t reach them. Still, rebalancing income distribution and to stem the brain drain are faraway goals from where we stand.