Kota Kinabalu: The Sabah Government is focused on empowering rural residents with skills to produce more entrepreneurs in the State, said State Rural Development Minister Datuk Jahid Jahim.
The Tamparuli Assemblyman said this was important to tackle rural poverty in Sabah, adding that 560 participants had participated in various courses organised by the Sabah Rural Development Ministry (KPLB) since last year.
“We provide skills courses to rural communities such as sewing, handicrafts, food processing, dastar (indigenous textile) weaving and chip-making.
“This is in line with the Ministry’s mission to make rural communities more prosperous through poverty alleviation efforts and to produce successful entrepreneurs with better knowledge, skills and family income,” he said.
He said the Sabah Government, through KPLB, has built five Community Skills Centres for entrepreneurship development and training, in addition to eight Rural Entrepreneurship Centres (PKD) equipped with workshops and machine tools.
“The PKDs aim to assist entrepreneurs guided by KPLB in increasing product output and expanding their businesses. What is important is that we focus on efforts to ensure that this group can take up roles and opportunities in the economic field,” he said.
Jahid said agricultural-based entrepreneurship programmes, such as the planting of Sacha Inchi and Pisang Saba and targeted swiftlet breeding programmes, were also carried out according to the needs and suitability of each district involved.
In addition, the One District One Product programme was implemented to improve the economy of rural entrepreneurs, which is run in groups or on their own premises.
The programme has encouraged the creation of flagship products for the village or district involved, he added.
Apart from that, Jahid said the Mini Estet Sejahtera (MESEJ) initiative, introduced by the Sabah government in 2006, was ongoing to tackle areas with high poverty rates.
“This programme is a holistic approach to alleviate poverty through housing and economic components, namely plantation enterprises with commodity crops such as oil palm and rubber,” he said.
