Rural Poor

Rural Poor

Many of the folks living in longhouses are facing such hardships with their day to day living. The problem is, it is so hard for them to make enough money to make ends meet.
It seems like there is never enough money to keep up with the expenses of the family no matter how hard they work. The chase for money seems never end.

Today a mother of a family of 4 children came to my office seeking for some help as his eldest son is going to college in Kuching to study Estate Management. She had scrapped the bottom of their savings of money that she had made from planting and selling vegetables. Being single handed, though she works from sun rise till sun set, how much can she grow and sell and how much can she really save over the years. Her husband works as a sundry lorry driver making a few hundred ringgit a month.

That is all they got each month living from day to day, month to month and year after year. Now the time had come that she would have to come up with enough money for the son to further his study. She is determined that she will find some in anyway she can so that he can go to college. I did my little part.

She said that she is lucky that she still have the longhouse land where she can plant vegetables to sell in town, and if she looses her land to plantation company she would not know how to find a living, as it would be impossible for her to get a job having live in the longhouse all her lives. She would be broke and her other children would never have a chance to go for further study anymore.

Living is so tough these day for the longhouse folks, with rising prices for goods and lack of income, most of the rural folks are poor and have very little money. I say, for all the years that the BN government had been in power apart from the urban poor, they have failed the rural folks in helping them to have better income to live a better life.

Chiew Chin Sing.
9th June, 2009