http://www.thestar.com.my/Lifestyle/Features/2013/04/22/Wired-to-the-world.aspx
Published:
Monday April 22, 2013 MYT 12:00:00 AM
Updated:
Friday April 26, 2013 MYT 12:30:24 AM
Spark! by ALVIN UNG
Aishah working on her blog. The Internet has
given her new opportunities for growth.
The amazing untold story of
how broadband was made accessible to rural Malaysia, thanks largely to
the initiative of a quiet man with a big vision.
ONE hot afternoon
in March, I bought a woollen hat woven by a young woman living in Felda
Jengka 24, an oil palm plantation in the heart of Pahang.
The
brown-and-yellow hat was adorned with a three-dimensional white flower.
Aishah took eight hours to crochet the hat. It was for sale for RM18.
“Can
I buy this hat online?” I asked, as we chatted at a rural broadband
Internet centre which began as a Pusat Internet Desa, or PID.
“Yes,
I’m on Facebook,” said Aishah, smiling shyly, as she sat on a tall
chair. “Just let me know the size, colours, and how many flowers you
want on the hat. You can also contact me on Yahoo Messenger.”
I fished out two red notes from my wallet. I wasn’t sure how to hand her the money.
“Thank
you for buying the hat,” Aishah said in Bahasa Malaysia, as she raised
her leg high. She took the two bills from me using her big toe and
second toe.
Nur Aishah Ariffin, 26, the youngest in a family of
six children, was born with stumps instead of arms. The school teachers
did not allow her to enrol in school, so she stayed at home watching
television everyday until she turned 18, when she joined a community
centre. She taught herself how to crochet. Using her feet, she used
scissors to snip yarn, wrapped the yarn around the crochet hook, and
began pulling loops. She made beautiful hats and bags.
But what
use was it to sell a woollen hat in the middle of an oil palm
plantation? Who would buy Aishah’s foot-made products? How would this
motivated, bright young woman find opportunities for growth and
learning?
Aishah’s story of untapped potential could be repeated
thousands of times in rural households all across the country. Even for
people who do not face the daily challenge of living without hands and
arms, the rural poor face other kinds of invisible disabilities. For
example, they spend far more time and money to do the things city folk
take for granted, whether it is reading the news, writing an e-mail, or
applying for entrance into universities.
The Internet is the great
leveller. Global research has shown that the rollout of Internet
services in rural communities can reduce urban migration while
generating new income and home businesses in villages.
Getting
there has been a challenge for Malaysia. Less than 15 years ago,
Internet penetration in the country was less than 10%. None of the
primary or secondary schools were wired to the Internet.
Access in rural
areas was zilch. Most villagers had not seen a computer.
Since
then Malaysia has been playing catch-up. The biggest game changer is the
Communications Multimedia Act (CMA 1998) introduced as one of the Bills
of Guarantee for the Multimedia Super Corridoor (MSC). This Act
encourages the building of civil society. Less known, but equally
important, is one of the 10 objectives: “to ensure an equitable
provision of affordable services over ubiquitous national
infrastructure.” In other words, rural folks should also get access to
affordable Internet technology.
But creating sound policy and
passing laws is only the first mile in a marathon. It is the ability to
implement simple, scalable and sustainable solutions that will ensure
whether the change effort endures or withers away.
Therein comes
the rub: It is not in the interest of private telecommunications to
spend billions to lay out broadband for so few people across jungles,
rivers and mountains. And even after you build Internet centres in
villages, it is an even bigger challenge to educate the people to use
the Net.
Last month, a Felda settler and village chief told me
that when he first sighted a desktop PC, he grabbed the mouse by its
“tail” and swung it like a lasso.
So who were the people who
helped to build the foundation for rural broadband access in Malaysia?
And years later, has that made a difference?
“Dr Halim is the man
you’re looking for,” declared Dr Fadhlullah Suhaimi Abdul Malek, the
NKEA director at Pemandu. “He’s the spark who made broadband accessible
in the rural setting. During a time when broadband was not available, he
was persistent in pushing for the idea. He convinced the telcos to join
in. And he always went down to the ground to make sure things were
happening. It’s an amazing, untold story.”
A few weeks later, I
found myself sitting in a Proton Perdana with Datuk Seri Dr Halim
Shafie, the chairman of Telekom Malaysia (TM), as we drove along the
Karak Highway to visit a community broadband centre in Jengka, a two
hours’ drive from Kuala Lumpur.
In 1999, when Halim was appointed
as deputy secretary-general of the Ministry of Energy, Water and
Communications, there was no broadband outside the city. Today there are
hundreds of rural broadband centres. More than a hundred are being set
up this year. All 10,000 schools and hundreds of rural libraries are
broadband-enabled. Halim helped to kick-start these initiatives.
“How did you even get started?” I asked Halim.
“We
started by asking a question,” Halim recollected as our car motored
past trucks going uphill on the Karak Highway. “How do we push
communications and the Internet into rural areas?”
“If you can put
Internet access into Bario, you can put it anywhere,” said Leo Moggie,
the then energy minister from Kanuwit, Sarawak.
Bario was a
Kelabit village in the highlands of Sarawak near the Kalimantan border.
As a kid, Idris Jala (now CEO of Pemandu) recollected walking one week
through jungle and travelling another week by boat to reach Miri.
Halim
enlisted Telekom Malaysia, Mimos and Unimas to install a VSAT facility
and an Internet centre so that villagers could access voice and Internet
services via satellite. When the service was launched in 2000, the
headmistress in Bario spoke, in tears: “For the first time in our
history, we can make a phone call from Bario.”
Halim was almost in
tears, too. “We saw how the Internet opened up the whole world for
rural folks, particularly kids,” Halim told me.
Now the challenge
was scalability: how do you do this again and again in hundreds of
obscure villages in Sabah, Sarawak and Peninsular Malaysia? And how do
you put in place the systems and structures to make such an undertaking
sustainable over the long-term? Or to put it bluntly: how do you avoid
building glorified cyber-cafes left to rot in the jungle?
Interestingly enough, Halim’s childhood prepared him to tackle these perplexing questions.
Halim
grew up in a rural village in Kuala Ketil near Sungai Petani, Kedah,
where he walked or cycled 5km to an estate primary school called Batu
Pekaka English School, led by the then headmaster David Raman.
“David
was the best teacher I ever had. He knew we all came from very poor
families,” said Halim, who grew up selling rubber, bananas, chickens and
flowers from the backyard in order to buy rice, flour and kerosene.
When Halim entered Standard Six, the headmaster applied for Halim to
enter Malay College Kuala Kangsar (MCKK) even though Halim had not heard
about the famous boarding school.
“David was extraordinarily kind
and committed to us. He gave us opportunities we never had. I could
never repay the debt I owed him,” Halim said.
Halim went to MCKK
without a school uniform during the first week but he made the decision
to work harder than anyone else. He woke up in the pre-dawn hours and
walked alone across a dark field (where the “Green Lady” was rumoured to
haunt) so that he could study in a lit classroom.
Halim
subsequently read Economics in Universiti Malaya, graduated in the top
2% in the Masters programme at Pittsburgh University in Pennsylvania,
the United States, and obtained a PhD in Information Transfer from
Syracuse University (in New York, the United States) in 1988.
“I
am not intelligent,” Halim said. “Coming from a rural school, I did not
get much exposure to the world. But I realised I could go somewhere in
life because I made the decision to work harder than almost anyone,
almost anywhere.”
Hard work drew him across the divide from rural
poverty to the urban middle class where he spent nearly three decades
climbing the ranks in several government ministries until he became
secretary-general of the Ministry of Energy, Water and Communications in
2000.
At this point, unknown to him, all the pieces of the jigsaw
were now in place for Halim to repay the debt he owed to his primary
school headmaster.
Halim’s reminisces were interrupted by our
arrival at Felda Jengka 24 – a squat building with a dozen PCs, WiFi, a
living room area and a training room. The TM chairman was given an
official welcome.
Amid the speeches, I found myself drawn towards
Muhammad Shafudin, manager of the community broadband centre, which was
recently rebranded as Pusat Internet 1Malaysia. As we chatted, I
discovered that Shafudin’s essentially a tech evangelist who transformed
the broadband outpost into a community hub.
Since starting his
job in 2010, he has trained more than 1,400 people on how to use Word,
access the Internet, assemble computers and set up a blog. He has
educated home-makers on the dangers of cyber crime. He has helped
grassroots entrepreneurs set up blogs and e-commerce sites to sell
products such as coins, rings, keris, frozen food, apple vinegar, olive
oil, papaya seed extract, and virgin coconut oil.
“We try to give
our best using the existing infrastructure in this centre,” Shafudin
told me. “We do everything from sweeping the rubbish to recruiting
volunteers and emceeing community events.”
If the elderly cannot
come to the centre, Shafudin and his assistant manager will bring
computers to their homes to educate them. Last year, Shafudin made a
video on Aishah’s story which won a U-Pustaka 2012 national award.
What
keeps Shafudin, a Gen Y university graduate, motivated to work in a
rural place? Shafudin said he is allowed to earn extra income when he
opens the centre after hours or when he provides a service, such as
installing Windows into a PC.
“I use the centre to help the
community, but the community also helps me. My work here has given me
the business opportunities to improve my life,” said Shafudin, the
father of a one-year-old son.
Ongoing efforts to bridge the
urban-rural divide are being coordinated under Pemandu’s Economic
Transformation Plan – in an Entry Point Project called “Extending
Reach.” The first initiative is building community broadband centres
such as the one I visited; 162 new community broadband centres are
expected to be set up this year. The second initiative provides wireless
access to selected villages through an initiative called “Kampung Tanpa
Wayar.” There were 2,489 rural wireless spots built in 2012; 689 more
wireless sites are planned for 2013.
Of course, transforming any
community requires a combination of high-tech and down-to-earth
initiatives, including revamping the local Saturday market.
One of
the projects which Pemandu is coordinating with the Federal Agriculture
Marketing Authority (FAMA) is to modernise local markets into a 24-hour
community market called Pasar Komuniti in Jengka.
Azlin Abdullah,
a Felda manager, told me the Jengka community – comprising 70,000
people who live in Maran, Jerantut and Temerloh – were fortunate to have
four Internet centres. “With these centres, the kids don’t have to go
to cybercafes. During school breaks, hundreds of children come here
everyday. The older kids use the centre to fill in online applications
for universities,” Azlin said.
“When I was in the city, I didn’t
dare to touch a computer,” said Samad Arshad, the ketua peneroka of
Felda 24. “Now I dare to hold a mouse.”
On our car ride back to Kuala Lumpur, I found Halim in a reflective mode.
“When
we put Internet access in rural areas for farmers, housewives and kids,
we are opening up their world. I really believe in that. There are kids
with potential everywhere. What we need to do is provide them
opportunities and facilities to realise their potential,” he told me.
At
that moment, something clicked for me. I realised there wouldn’t be a
Shafudin or an Aishah talking to me today if not for the foundation that
Halim built a decade ago when he was secretary-general of the Ministry
of Energy.
“You built a foundation of success for these people just as David Raman built the foundation for you,” I told Halim.
“What
I’ve done is nowhere near what David has done for me and so many
others,” Halim said immediately. After a while he nodded slowly. “But,
yes, I suppose I am now doing it for others.”
Aishah herself is a recipient of Halim’s – and David Raman’s – legacy.
Since
meeting Shafudin at the community broadband centre in Jengka, Aishah
has begun sharing her story through her Facebook page and selling hats,
bags and origami items through the Internet.
Aishah’s now downloading
YouTube videos to learn beading which she hopes will make her products
more saleable.
“If I could, I would come here everyday. I’m
learning so much by studying what other people do in art and craft,”
Aishah said, as she keenly observed me taking notes on my iPad.
Now
Aishah sells only a couple of hats or bags a month. But that’s not the
point. The point is that the Internet has connected Aishah to the world.
She
now has the opportunity to contribute her talents in ways she could
never have done before. Who knows where this will lead her? So if you
are able to connect tens of thousands of Aishahs to the rest of the
world, then you are, in the words of Steve Jobs, making a dent in the
universe.
“There are thousands of people in the most rural areas
who will flourish when we give them opportunities,” said Halim as our
car re-entered Kuala Lumpur. “Even under the most extreme circumstances,
we can discover human potential.”
■ Alvin Ung is a facilitator,
executive coach and author of the bestselling book Barefoot Leadership.
To view more videos, photos and insights on Datuk Seri Dr Halim Shafie,
please visit www.businesscircle.com.my. The column and multimedia
content are a collaborative effort between the columnist and the
Economic Transformation Programme.
