What’s the matter with kampong Kedah?
Inside a rubber estate, a looking glass for the land below KLCC where RM600 is like RM6,000.
SIK: It’s a cloudy day here in a part of Kedah which most people just drive by — if they go anywhere near it at all.
In a few minutes there will be a drippy rain, which can be the farmer’s delight or curse, depending on which way it turns.
Come to rubber tapper Mohamad Suhaimi’s home and hear the 31-year-old’s thoughts on life here, before the thin rain comes pounding on the corrugated tin sheets that’s everywhere around him, like a loud neighbour.
“Do I spend RM600 to fix my house or buy food items and essentials for my wife and two children? I have to choose one and it is difficult,” he tells FMT.
That’s his 20x20ft tiny wooden house that’s tottering on the verge of collapse. It stands on stilts, just like the homes we all used to draw when our teachers told us to sketch a kampong.
It’s inside a rubber estate in Kampong Banggol Jeneri here, some 5km from town.
Look around. That’s Mohamad’s family. His wife and two young children, aged five and four.
So here’s what makes the Form Five grad’s choices even harder: even that RM600 he has on hand, he doesn’t make that all the time.
When the weather or demand for latex is bad, he gets nothing. That’s when he becomes car workshop handyman part-time.
He gets about RM30 to RM50 a car. That is, if there are cars for him to repair.
Now it starts raining. It’s not a drip, it’s a downpour. Many parts of their home have started leaking.
His wife Siti Zaharah Ahmad, 24, quickly puts up plastic sheets on valuable items. You watch her put plastic over photo frames, her children’s school books and food.
Zaharah is a part-time rubber tapper and housewife. She said the family’s income has dried up so much they could not pay the RM180 kindergarten fees for her youngest daughter, Nurmaizatul Huma, four.
Nurmaizatul and her brother, Mohd Akasha, five, are carefree souls.
Akasha appears happy as he can be, occasionally falling from his bicycle while going around in circles at a tiny compound outside his house.
Nurmaizatul falls asleep on her mother’s lap after a long day at kindergarten.
The whole family sleep in a partition measuring about 10ft wide and 6ft tall, on an old sunken queen-sized bed which has seen better days.
“Sorry here got no light, only got kelambu (mosquito net),” Mohamad chuckled nervously as he crouched and entered the tiny opening to his bedroom.
Drops of water seep rapidly onto the bed as the pitter-patter of the rain gets louder. Mohamad swiftly takes a piece of large plastic wrap and covers his bed.
“This is biasa. (normal)” he says.
Sik Amanah chief Sulaiman Ibrahim, who brought FMT to Mohamad’s house, sits by the fragile wooden stairs of the house, saying this is “not his worst case”.
“You know, for someone to get RM600 here, it is like getting RM6,000 in KL. That is the value of money here.” Sulaiman says matter-of-factly.
So poor, they are eating dedak, says the Amanah man.
Sulaiman, who describes himself as a local welfare worker-turned-politician, says the number of poor people in Sik has increased in the past five years.
Describing the situation as “dire”, he relates a story of a senior citizen in Sik who lived on ‘dedak’ (animal feed) for a living.
Sulaiman says a 75-year-old market helper bought low grade “beras merah”, which is usually used as chicken feed.
“The man worked as a pasar malam worker, hauling items at the local market.
“I found out after a chicken and bird feed trader alerted me on my rounds… apparently this old man had been buying it every other day.
“We tracked him down, paid him a visit and gave him a bag of proper rice and other essentials,” Sulaiman said.
Sulaiman said the senior was so grateful for his help and in turn helped to plant grass around the Sik Amanah’s house in town.
In this area, there are some 300 or more hardcore poor and 6,000 others in the “poor” category, Amanah Sik estimates.
Sulaiman runs a team of about 10 welfare workers under the Sik Amanah Care Squad (Skuad Peduli Amanah Sik), handing out aid in the form of essential items.
He says this is thanks to generous local donors who had come to his doorstep, assisting him in buying essential goods.
Sulaiman says his team has often followed-up on the poor and helped out as much as they could from time to time.
“For most of these poor folk, RM600 it is like RM6,000. They know what is the value of money.
“And to say the people of Sik are lazy or one of the entitled-types is completely wrong. They are very hardworking,” Sulaiman says.
Sulaiman says a lack of external investment has caused a dearth of jobs for the poor.
He notes that Sik has large tracts of land that are ideal for agriculture. If there were development, there would be jobs for the poor.
“Currently, the poor in Sik are doing odd jobs. They are in the jungles scouring for rattan, doing small construction jobs and tapping rubber,” he says.
Sulaiman, 36, was from a hardcore poor family in Sik himself. He got his first break after joining a national stand-up comic competition five years ago.
Sik, Kedah’s largest district at 1,635 sq km, is two times bigger than Seberang Prai, Penang. It shares a border in the north with Yala, Thailand.
It is 75km southeast of Kedah’s capital, Alor Star.
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FMT has contacted Mohd Tajuddin Abdullah, Kedah’s executive councillor in charge for information, rural development, poverty eradication for comments. He has not replied at the time of writing.