Assistant minister calls on rural people to find ways to diversify economic activities

MARUDI: The rural people should take on the recent fuel and rice price hikes by going back to padi planting as a way to diversify their economic activities.

Assistant Minister of Water Supplies, Sylvester Entri Muran, made this call at a meet-the-people session last weekend at Rumah Assam, Sungai Pedada in Assam Paya, about 40 minutes’ boat ride from Kuala Baram.

The Marudi state assemblyman said padi farming is particularly relevant for those living along rivers in lower Baram, Bakong and Tinjar.

“Short-term cash crops could add to their income as their land is not planted with oil palm as elsewhere,” he said.

The increase in the price of rubber is also another plus, so they can tap their trees that have long been abandoned or neglected.

Rice farming has become a national focus to achieve self-sufficiency, so local farmers can tap get into this by utilising their idle land.

Assam Paya and Pengelayan in the lower Baram used to be rice bowls in the past.

“The current shortage of food could affect the rural farming community if they do not plant padi.”

“They do not have other sources of income to buy rice for their consumption. Anyway, planting padi would help the government increase food production,” he said.

Entri pointed out that the present hard economic situation should be a challenge to encourage people to do farming the modern way.

He acknowledged that in the past, the Department of Agriculture helped padi farmers by giving them weedicide, pesticide, fertilizers, and improvements of farm infrastructure.

The cutting down of such assistance and high costs of farm inputs have caused many to leave their farms.

“Rural farmers have called on the government to help them reverse the trend by providing farm subsidies, particularly as weedicide now cost RM100 per four-litre can,” he said.

Baram District Officer Joseph Belayong, Baram Special Affairs Officer Thomas Paran, and heads of departments were among those present at the function.