BRUNEI-MUARA

LOCAL youth of Mukim Lumapas are not keen to work and collaborate in improving the ‘One Village One Product’ (OVOP) of the Village Consecutive Council (MPK) Kg Lumapas ‘B’ said the head village.

Kg Lumapas ‘B’ is one of the villages under Mukim Lumapas that started its OVOP in 2013 with the planting of chili on 50 hectares of land in Kg Lumapas.

Hj Chuchu Hj Serudin when interview by _The Brunei Times _said that more than 100 youth under Mukim Lumapas were registered to work on the field and only few are left now.

“During the first phase of the project, we had received more than 100 registrations amongst youth. They started to work soon after we cleared the large area of land in front of fuel station.

“But over time, the amount of people working on the land is reducing to only 20-30 people. It keeps on reducing from time to time,” said Hj Chuchu.

He said that the youth in the village are not willing to work on the field or under direct sunlight.

“At first, they wanted to work and get involved in the village’s project, but when they started to work on the field they started to realise that working under direct sunlight is not what they expected,” he said.

“We prioritised the unemployed youth, widow, those who want to get extra income and some retired residents.

“But the one that we most welcome is widow as it could help them to increase their income,” he added

He also expressed his disappointment on youth in the village for taking granted on this opportunity.

“We are actually making an effort to avoid from taking foreigners to work on this project, unfortunately, the efforts were ineffective as the villagers itself are not teamed up and collaborate in managing the land,” said the head village.

“We just carry on with the planting and selling process of the chili and other vegetables planting regardless of our problem in lacking of manpower.

He went on to say that one possible way to attract the youth is to give them incentives like showing to them the profit we get from the selling activities of our product.

“Probably they don’t see the benefits of selling the vegetables. We are planning to gather all the unemployed youth of the villages under this mukim, give them talk and let them know that even though they have to work under sunlight, we will ensure them they will receive their salary in line with their efforts in increasing the sales of the product,” he said.

Hj Chuchu said that it could be one of ways to motivate and inspire the youth to work and collaborate with us.

“There is no specific amount of the share, but the profit is quite outstanding, and if they are willing to work with us, they will receive what they deserve from their hard work. Currently, the MPK Lumapas is successfully planting more than 15,000 trees of chili on 20 hectares of the land.

He said that they usually sell the product to villagers and restaurants. “Usually we able to sell more than 300 kilogram of the chili and 1kg $5.”

He went on to say that more than $45, 000 was allocated by the Ministry of Home Affairs to clear the 50 hectares of land in 2013.

The Brunei Times