KAPIT: Bukit Goram Assemblyman Jefferson Jamit Unyat on Wednesday attended a briefing on the potential and development plan for agriculture in Kapit conducted by the Agriculture Department.
The briefing was held in conjunction with the official visit of Head of commercialisation of agriculture division of the Ministry of Modernisation of Agriculture, Native Land and Regional Development Dr Gluma Saban; Assistant Director of Sarawak Agriculture Department (Commercial Crops) Dominic Chunggat and Director of Federal Agriculture Marketing Authority (FAMA) Sarawak Shahid Abu Bakar to Kapit Division.
Conducted by Kapit Agriculture Department Assistant Director Badin Unor, the briefing was on the following aspects – the potential and planning of agriculture development programmes under 10th and 11th Malaysia Plan, profile of successful projects undertaken by Kapit Agriculture Department and issues arising from project implementation.
In the briefing, he called on the Modernisation of Agriculture, Native Land and Regional Development Ministry to set up an Agriculture Collection Centre here by 2020. “Majorities of the people here are farmers – they have the land bank but the main shortcoming is to tap their potential and the necessary fund to open up land for agriculture – that is why they need the government assistance.
“The presence of Rubber Institute of Smallholders Development Authority (RISDA) has encouraged many land owners to plant rubber. The undulating land is suitable for rubber planting. The target is to plant 20,000 hectares of high yielding rubber tree participated by 8500 participants to produce 24, 210 tons of rubber.
“We also identified ‘buah dabai’ as Kapit iconic fruit. ‘Dabai’ from Kapit fetch high value in the state. I appealed to the government through the Agriculture Department to identify land for the ‘Dabai Park’. Land along Jalan Kapit-Song is suitable for ‘dabai’ planting,” stressed Jamit.
As for pepper, the plan is to cultivate 2,513 hectares involving 19, 503 participants to produce 5026.8 tonnes of pepper. The Bukit Goram Assemblyman also called on the state Agriculture Department to set up a fishery station to breed ‘ikan empurau’ and ‘ikan semah’ locally instead of in Tarat, Serian. “There are several species of ‘ikan empurau’ but the best comes from Kapit,” he pointed out.
