Day Two - 5th of May, 2006, Sabah Poverty Research

Lahal Datu View from the Sky.

The smiling lady in extreme poverty. Is it common smile you come across on the way to your workplace in the morning? I am still wondering about the relationship between happiness and cash income.


It is children;s day in Korea and the Sabah Post, the local paper, carried the article on the damage by the flood of several days ago. According to the report, the Kinabatangan are in the east was hit most. War fled to the east, 45m away from KK, to the place called Lahal Datu.
Dr Iguchi, Professor Itagaki and I visited the Department of Development and the officer in charge of the department briefed the situation of the poverty. According to their statistics, they have 350 hard core poor families. Although they have several projects for the hard core poor families, the result was not that good. There were interesting stories about the seaweed farming; the boat provided by the government without engine and the turtle attacking the seaweed farm which the fishery department did not foresee.
We visited the old lady who were provided with the fish pond by the government and had a look at the result of it. The lady in the category of hardcore poverty seemed to be very happy though. She just abandoned the fish pond and did not care about the fish pond except when she wanted to have a fish on her dinner table.
The poor are mostly are smll planters with less than 7 acres. We found that the marketing process can be the key to increase the cash income for the poor. If they could establish producers cooperatives managing the production and the sales, they could get the proper price for the oil palm seeds. Since oil palm trees absorbes all the nutrients of the soil, other fruit plants are not grown properly. Maybe people have a fairer chance than the fruit trees if we can think about more innovative way to grow and sell them.