The A$20 Gamble, Part 3: A Problem Named Many Times

PART 3 OF 3

Part one of this series examined why young Bruneians are gambling on Australian farm work. Part two considered the mismatch between what graduates study and the jobs available.

This final part asks the plainest question left: what has close to two decades of effort delivered, and what should happen now?

KopiTalk with MHO

Brunei has spent close to two decades measuring this problem. The latest figures show why the debate has not gone away.

Institutions were built. Whether they have opened enough doors is the fair question still left to answer.

The 2024 Manpower Blueprint records initiatives stretching back to 2009.

That year brought the Employment Order and Workplace Safety and Health Order. JobCentre Brunei and the i-Ready Apprenticeship Programme followed in 2017.

The oil and gas Bruneianisation Directive and i-Usahawan programme arrived in 2018. The Lifelong Learning Centre and Manpower Planning and Employment Council followed in 2019.

Sector committees and SkillsPlus funding appeared in 2020, followed by salary guidelines covering 58 job positions in 2021.

That is sustained institutional activity. The fair question is how much lasting difference it made, who benefited and where the remaining gaps require a different response.

What the Numbers Show

The 2024 Manpower Blueprint puts labour underutilisation between 15.7 and 21.9 per cent during 2017-2021. The 2025 Labour Force Survey reports 16.4 per cent.

The latest figure remains within that earlier range. It indicates a continuing challenge, but does not prove that conditions worsened every year or that every intervention failed.

Labour underutilisation is broader than unemployment. It also captures unmet demand for work beyond those formally classified as unemployed.

The Blueprint also reports that professionals, managers, executives and technicians represented 40 per cent of the local workforce in 2021, down from 45 per cent in 2017.

That is a historical comparison, not a verdict on today's workforce. A falling share does not, by itself, prove that the number of people in those roles fell.

Even with that caution, the policy question remains: are enough opportunities being created for people to use their education, build skills and earn a sustainable living?

The 2025 survey offers another angle. Between 2024 and 2025, informal employment among locals fell from 11,800 to 8,500.

Among non-locals, it rose from 11,400 to 18,200, an increase of approximately 60 per cent. Informal employment describes work arrangements and protections, not entry-level status.

The figures show a marked shift in informal employment. They cannot establish whether non-local recruitment displaced local applicants, filled otherwise unfilled positions or reflected another labour-market change.

Nor does the decline among locals automatically mean lost opportunity. Its significance depends partly on whether those workers moved into more secure employment.

The scrutiny belongs on recruitment practices, working conditions and policy outcomes, without turning foreign workers into targets for frustrations they did not create.

From Measurement to Outcomes

Nobody sets out to be detained at an Australian airport, or exploited on a farm without a safe way to report it.

Such choices may emerge when risk abroad appears more manageable than insecurity at home. This series suggests that insecurity has persisted beyond one difficult year.

Domestic programmes need clearer outcome reporting. Alongside placement totals, publish how many participants remain employed after six and twelve months, what they earn and whether their work uses their training.

Where results fall short, say plainly what will change, who is responsible and when progress will be reviewed.

The desire to work abroad should also be addressed openly and practically. Assess a formal, vetted pathway for Bruneians seeking temporary work overseas.

Any pathway would depend on destination-country rules and cooperation. It would require lawful work authorisation, vetted employers, clear contracts, published earnings after costs and an effective complaints process.

If that assessment supports a pilot, start small. Judge it by participants' actual savings, treatment, skills gained and employment prospects after returning home.

A country does not lose its young people simply to another country's farms. It risks losing them to the accumulated gap between national ambition and opportunities they can reach.

Brunei has spent close to two decades measuring that gap. The test now is whether its programmes can close it.

Some Bruneians will still choose overseas work when worthwhile options exist at home. That can be a legitimate choice, provided the work is lawful and properly protected.

When uncertain work abroad appears more promising than what is available or permitted at home, however, that calculation deserves a practical answer.

Sources: Manpower Blueprint for Brunei Darussalam (2024), including its historical timeline and workforce indicators for 2017-2021; Department of Economic Planning and Statistics, Labour Force Survey 2025, published in 2026, including comparisons with 2024.

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The A$20 Gamble, Part 2: The Mismatch Brunei Has Yet to Resolve

 PART 2 OF 3

Part one examined why some young Bruneians consider Australian farm work. This part examines one structural pressure behind that choice: the mismatch between qualifications, available work and expectations.

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The 2024 Manpower Blueprint recorded 311 vacancies against 2,760 degree-level jobseekers: roughly one vacancy for every nine people in that qualification group.

“Such inclination may influence young people's aspiration, thus affecting labour market outcomes.”

That sentence is not from the online discussion that started this series. It appears in Brunei's own national strategy for education, skills and employment.

The Manpower Planning and Employment Council released the Blueprint in 2024. Among its concerns is a mismatch between education output and labour-market demand.

In its published qualification-level table, the Blueprint recorded 311 vacancies against 2,760 jobseekers holding a first degree or higher.

That is equivalent to roughly one vacancy for every nine degree-level jobseekers in that snapshot. It does not mean nine applicants contested every position.

At the technical and vocational level, it recorded 948 vacancies against 2,085 jobseekers. The imbalance narrowed further among those with secondary education or below.

These are aggregate counts, not a measure of direct competition for each job. Vacancies also differ by occupation, experience, salary, location and required specialisation.

Even with that caution, the direction is difficult to dismiss. In the Blueprint's snapshot, the imbalance was greatest among jobseekers with degree-level qualifications.

Not a Shortage of Graduates

The supply side is substantial. In 2021, 6,208 students graduated from Brunei's higher education and technical institutions, according to figures cited in the 2024 Blueprint.

Business and information and communications technology accounted for a combined 56 per cent of those graduates. Quantity, however, does not guarantee a match with employers' requirements.

A degree category can conceal wide differences in technical ability, experience and specialisation. The figures therefore indicate structural friction, not that every graduate fits every vacancy.

The 2025 Labour Force Survey provides a newer picture of where employment is concentrated. Public administration accounted for 18.9 per cent of employed people aged 15 and above.

Wholesale and retail trade accounted for 12.8 per cent, while construction represented 11.1 per cent. Information and communication accounted for 2.3 per cent.

Those shares describe existing employment, not current vacancies. They nevertheless show an economy where public administration remains the largest single employment category.

A Preference Years in the Making

Numbers alone cannot explain why many young Bruneians pursue the same limited range of jobs. The Blueprint's survey evidence offers part of the answer.

In the jobseeker survey cited by the 2024 Blueprint, 68 per cent of respondents preferred public-sector employment, mainly because of its perceived benefits.

Another study cited in the Blueprint asked Brunei's 15-year-olds about their expected careers. Their answers clustered around a short list of familiar occupations.

Boys most often named soldier, pilot, engineer, police officer and businessman. Girls most often named doctor, teacher, lawyer and soldier.

The lists suggest that secure or established occupations retain a powerful hold on young imaginations. Even “businessman” reveals little about whether respondents envisioned entrepreneurship.

The 2025 Labour Force Survey recorded 5,700 employers and 9,100 own-account workers among 220,800 employed people aged 15 and above: about 6.7 per cent combined.

The Blueprint also cites the World Economic Forum's 2019 Global Competitiveness Report, which placed Brunei 91st among 141 economies for entrepreneurial culture.

That ranking is historical, not a current league table. Its relevance lies in the longer pattern the Blueprint was designed to address.

None of this amounts to a character judgement on an entire generation. Employment aspirations form long before a young person enters the labour market.

Parents model what appears safe. Schools reward particular achievements, while a small society naturally associates certain occupations with security, status and predictable progression.

Young people cannot fairly be blamed for seeking stability. The survey itself links their public-sector preference mainly to its perceived benefits.

The Blueprint itself shows that the Government recognises the problem. Recognition and sustained effort matter, but neither should be mistaken for measurable resolution.

The unresolved question is whether education, economic development and hiring demand are moving together quickly enough for the generation now waiting.

Coming Next

Part 3: why the mismatch persists despite years of genuine government effort, and what the 2025 rise in labour underutilisation says about implementation.

KopiTalk with MHO

 

PROBOSCIS

When the Law Brings a Tape Measure

A viral video claims it is illegal to be fat in Japan.

Relax. Nobody is arrested for ordering extra rice.

Japan has done something less dramatic—and rather more sensible. Health insurers provide annual metabolic-health checks for people aged 40 to 74.

Then comes the tape measure: 85 centimetres for men and 90 for women. These are screening thresholds, not arrest warrants.

Brunei may wish to loosen its belt and take notice. Nearly two-thirds of adults were recorded as overweight or obese in the country’s 2015–2016 health survey.

Do we need waistline police patrolling buffet tables? Probably not.

But regular screening, earlier dietary advice—and fewer official functions where sugar arrives disguised as hospitality?

Perhaps that is worth measuring.

After all, our national waistline may be expanding faster than the economy.

Proboscis is still sniffing around.

Source note: Japan’s Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare; Brunei Darussalam STEPS Noncommunicable Disease Risk Factors Survey 2015–2016, as reported by the World Health Organisation.

The A$20 Gamble, Part 1: What Twenty Dollars Reveals

PART 1 OF 3

Twenty Australian dollars pays the service charge for an ETA application, not a work permit. Yet for some unemployed or underemployed young Bruneians, it can resemble the only door still open. This three-part series examines why.

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The Australian ETA app costs twenty dollars. What that modest charge reveals about the choices some young Bruneians believe remain deserves far more attention.

“An Electronic Travel Authority is not a work visa. You are not allowed to work in Australia on an ETA.” — Australian Home Affairs

The message reached me the way many of these stories do now: a friend forwarding a link past midnight, on a weekend.

What followed was a long, unusually candid public discussion. Contributors identifying themselves as unemployed or underemployed young Bruneians were considering Australia’s Electronic Travel Authority as a back door into paid work.

Fruit picking featured prominently. The jobs described appeared to require no degree, while the employers involved reportedly asked few questions about work rights at the point of hiring.

The discussion ran for days and disagreed with itself in useful ways, with contributors describing the pay, the risks and, repeatedly, why it had come to this.

What Canberra Has Already Said

Start with the part that is not complicated. Australia’s Department of Home Affairs says ETA holders cannot undertake paid work for an Australian employer.

An ETA may be cancelled if its holder works or intends to work. A traveller unable to satisfy border officials that the visit meets ETA conditions may also be refused entry.

Those found working unlawfully may face visa cancellation, detention and removal. These restrictions apply to ETA holders and have existed for years.

What appears to be changing is not the rule, but the willingness of some Bruneians to consider testing it despite the consequences.

There is another danger that received less attention in the discussion. Australian enforcement actions and labour research continue to document migrant exploitation, including underpayment and unlawful hiring.

Agriculture remains a high-risk sector. People without valid work rights are especially exposed because reporting abuse may also reveal their immigration status.

A refusal at the border may be the least damaging outcome. For those drawn into exploitative work, the consequences can extend much further.

What the Thread Actually Said

The discussion supplied detail official channels rarely do: the arithmetic of what this route reportedly costs against what it appears to save.

Contributors said workers without valid passes could be offered less than legally employed staff. For eligible employees, Australian employers generally must contribute 12 per cent superannuation on ordinary earnings.

An employer may evade that obligation in practice. Australian workplace law nevertheless gives migrant workers the same basic rights regardless of status, although enforcing them can still be intimidating and difficult.

Cash paid off the books may mean no tax withholding, payslip or superannuation. That apparent saving may conceal tax and record-keeping breaches while making underpayment considerably harder to prove.

Several contributors placed farm accommodation at A$250 to A$300 a week, deducted from already uncertain pay, and described stays lasting around three months.

I cannot independently verify those figures, and conditions will vary between farms. They should be read as participants’ accounts, not an industry-wide rate.

Even so, the broader mechanics are consistent with documented migrant-worker exploitation in Australia: insecure work, underpayment and fear of reporting abuse.

None of it adds up to a good deal. It offers an explanation: someone considering this route is weighing two forms of insecurity and choosing the one that may pay weekly.

The Numbers Behind the Post

Brunei’s 2025 Labour Force Survey, published in July, is more instructive than any online estimate. Its two population measures need to be read carefully.

Using the International Labour Organization reference population aged 15 and above, unemployment rose to 11,800 people, or 5.1 per cent, from 4.8 per cent in 2024.

Brunei’s national headline measure, covering those aged 18 and above, was 5.0 per cent. The distinction changes the decimal point, not the direction of pressure.

Youth unemployment among those aged 15 to 24 stood at 18.4 per cent. The gap by sex was stark: 15.3 per cent for young men and 23.7 per cent for young women.

That means nearly one in four young women in the labour force who were seeking work did not find it. The survey records the gap but does not explain it.

Time-related underemployment rose from 15,600 to 19,500 people. These were workers who wanted additional hours, worked fewer than 40 hours and were available for more work.

The survey’s composite measure of labour underutilisation, encompassing unemployment, time-related underemployment and the potential labour force, climbed from 13.8 to 16.4 per cent.

The survey also reports median monthly income from employment falling from BND1,000 in 2024 to BND950 in 2025.

Read together, these figures tell more than a story of too few jobs. They show a labour market absorbing more time-related underemployment while median income falls.

That is pressure from both directions at once. The ETA discussion matters because it shows how some young people are responding when neither direction offers security.

Coming Next

Part 2: why Brunei, a country producing thousands of qualified graduates every year, still offers too few graduate-level vacancies, and what the government’s own 2024 Manpower Blueprint says about it.

Editorial illustration. The people depicted are not individuals identified in this report.

ECONOMIC OXYGEN, AGAIN

A vendor may now track where an invoice sits, but visibility does not pay wages, settle suppliers or keep a small business alive. When the same complaints return year after year, the question is no longer whether the system works, but whether anyone is measuring how long it takes to fail vendors.

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Brunei's Late-Payment Cycle Completes Another Round

Malai Hassan Othman  |  September 2026

In May, this column asked whether prompt payment could become part of Brunei's economic strength rather than remain an administrative footnote. Four months on, the honest answer is not yet: substantially the same grievance has since appeared twice more on the same pages, expressed in almost the same words.

Between 12 and 15 August, two opinion letters repeated what has become a familiar complaint. One writer, publishing as Concerned, described the Treasury Accounting and Financial Information System, or TAFIS 2.0, as swallowing a submitted invoice into silence — no confirmation of receipt, no indication of where it stood in the approval chain, nothing further until payment eventually arrived, or did not. A second writer, Seriously Concerned, made the sharper point that the delay usually begins before an invoice can even be uploaded: a Delivery Order, a Goods Receipt or a Service Entry Sheet may need sign-off inside a ministry or department before the Treasury Department ever sees the paperwork.

On 12 September, the Treasury Department responded in a letter titled “Transparency in Every Transaction.” It thanked both writers for raising their concerns and explained that timely payment is a shared responsibility involving vendors, requesting departments and the Treasury Department. It pointed to Government Vendor Portal features that let vendors track an invoice's status and respond to queries, and encouraged vendors to use them and keep their documentation complete.

Readers with longer memories will recognise the shape of that response, because it is not the first of its kind. In July 2024, responding to a contractor writing as Frustrated Contractor, the Treasury Department opened its first Payment Clinic and promised closer coordination between departments. By November, with complaints still coming in, the ministry was describing the same difficulties as ordinary teething problems in a system barely seven months old. In February 2025, responding to another wave of letters, it opened a Payment Unit Counter and again urged vendors to check their documentation. Lay the four replies side by side and swap their dates around, and it is not obvious a reader would notice: the language stays courteous, the explanations stay plausible, and the advice stays the same — submit correctly, follow the process, use the portal, and contact the department when problems arise.

None of this requires bad faith. Large payment systems are complicated, public officers work under real procedural constraints, and vendors do sometimes submit incomplete or inaccurate documents. But sincerity delivered on a loop, without a mechanism that changes the odds for the next vendor in the queue, stops being reassurance and starts being routine.

The central problem is not simply whether TAFIS 2.0 functions. It is whether responsibility can be identified at all when a payment stalls somewhere between delivery and disbursement. A vendor may have completed the work, supplied the goods, and already paid employees, transporters and subcontractors — and still find the invoice trapped somewhere before Treasury processing has even formally begun. Some vendors have also reported that issuing a purchase order does not necessarily protect the corresponding departmental allocation for the life of a contract; if that account is accurate, a supplier can fulfil a valid government order only to discover that payment must wait for a later budget cycle. That is more than an inconvenience. For smaller businesses, it restricts cash flow, delays wages and supplier settlements, raises borrowing costs, and erodes confidence in government procurement generally — and the consequences travel outward, since one delayed public-sector payment has a way of becoming several delayed private-sector ones.

This is why prompt payment is economic oxygen, not a courtesy: a business cannot run indefinitely on assurances while salaries, rent, financing and statutory obligations keep arriving on schedule regardless. The Government Vendor Portal may improve visibility, but tracking a delayed invoice is not the same as preventing one. What is still missing is a public measure of performance — average payment times by ministry and department, the share of invoices exceeding agreed periods, and the principal causes of delay where these can be identified. Publishing those figures would separate isolated documentation errors from persistent administrative bottlenecks, and would let improvement be demonstrated rather than repeatedly promised. Accountability need not begin with blame. It can begin with measurement.

The Treasury Department's latest response is reasonable, on its own terms. But a reasonable explanation delivered for a fourth time is no longer evidence that the problem is being managed — only that it is being explained well. If this column must return to the issue in 2027, it should not have to explain why the story sounds exactly like this one.

 

Malai Hassan Othman is a veteran Brunei journalist, columnist and policy adviser.

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Tarus Hilang: When Big Launches Quietly Disappear

Brunei knows how to launch with ceremony, confidence and headlines. But what happens after the ribbon is cut and the cameras leave? With 153 unfinished RKN11 projects carried into RKN12, tarus hilang is no longer merely a joke. It is a question of delivery, transparency, amanah and lasting public trust.

KopiTalk with MHO

Bruneians have a phrase for it now. Launch it big. Launch it glamorous. Then — tarus hilang.

“We are very good at ribbon-cutting. We are not yet good at finishing.”

I did not go looking for this story. It found me, as many honest stories do, through a coffee-shop conversation that had migrated online.

The complaint was not new. Bruneians have raised it for years, quietly, during kopitalk sessions and through the private corridors of WhatsApp groups.

What was different was seeing the frustration expressed so plainly in public — and observing how many readers appeared to recognise the pattern immediately.

One online post accused the government of launching unfinished projects with considerable ceremony. Another reduced the entire complaint to a phrase requiring no translation here: tarus hilang.

Straight after the launch, it disappears.

A third post asked what had happened to infrastructure components supposedly intended to follow the opening of the Temburong Bridge. It also questioned why progress appeared faster across the border.

I cannot verify every claim attached to those discussions. Some details circulating about particular projects do not correspond neatly with the available public record.

I will not repeat what I cannot substantiate. Nevertheless, the underlying question is fair and deserves a factual response rather than a defensive one.

So, let us examine what the record actually shows.

The Record, Not the Rumour

Brunei's Eleventh National Development Plan, or RKN11, contained 221 projects. When its status was reported to the Legislative Council in March 2024, 54 had been completed.

Another 72 remained under implementation, while 95 were still at various planning, design or tender stages. That distinction matters: unfinished does not automatically mean abandoned.

Yet it also means that barely one-quarter of the projects listed under the plan had reached completion before Brunei moved into its next development cycle.

The broader economic picture was equally sobering. Brunei's gross domestic product contracted by 1.8 per cent during the first quarter of 2025.

Nominal GDP per capita also declined from BND51,645 in 2022 to BND44,996 in 2024 — a reduction exceeding BND6,600 within two years.

GDP per capita is not the same as household income. Nevertheless, its decline points towards an economy producing less value per person and operating with narrower fiscal room.

These figures do not explain individual project delays. They do, however, underline why Brunei can afford neither weak execution nor development spending that remains tied up without producing timely public benefit.

RKN12 allocates BND4 billion across 305 projects during its five-year implementation period from 2024 to 2029.

Significantly, 153 are projects carried forward from RKN11, while 152 are new. The unfinished past therefore occupies almost half of Brunei's current development programme.

For the 2026/27 financial year, BND480 million has been allocated to development expenditure, including schools, healthcare facilities, transport technology and food-production infrastructure.

Every one of those investments may be worth pursuing. No reasonable citizen should want fewer classrooms, weaker emergency services or outdated public infrastructure.

The question is not whether Brunei should plan ambitiously. It is whether ambition on paper has learnt enough from projects that struggled against deadlines, procurement and implementation.

What “Delivery” Looks Like Next Door

This is where the comparison being made by Bruneians online deserves examination, even when the original viral claims behind it remain uncertain.

Across the border, the Sarawak–Sabah Link Road Phase 2 includes plans for Sarawak's first road tunnel, to be constructed under one of the project packages in Limbang.

The proposed 2.24-kilometre tunnel is intended to reduce a winding route of approximately 22.4 kilometres to around seven kilometres while limiting extensive hill cutting.

It forms part of a much larger and technically demanding road programme expected to continue until 2029. It should not be mistaken for a completed achievement.

Nor is this comparison intended to declare that one side of the border invariably performs better. Malaysia has its own catalogue of delays, cost overruns and abandoned promises.

The useful comparison is simpler: major infrastructure requires visible progress long after the announcement, sustained through the difficult years between groundbreaking and public use.

That is where public confidence is either earned or quietly lost.

Why This Keeps Happening

This is not about blaming one ministry, officer or contractor. Blame may provide temporary satisfaction, but it seldom explains why similar difficulties survive successive development plans.

The pattern is structural because the incentives surrounding a launch are different from those governing implementation, monitoring and eventual handover.

A launch photographs well. A groundbreaking ceremony fits neatly into a press release. Progress becomes harder to publicise when construction falls behind schedule or remains caught between agencies.

Nobody organises a ceremony for a project entering another year of planning. There is no ribbon to cut for “still under implementation”.

Procurement, inter-agency coordination and administrative delays are frequently offered as explanations when development timelines slip.

Those obstacles will not disappear under RKN12 merely because the allocation is larger or because the projects carry greater expectations.

Something more useful than another launch photograph would therefore serve the public: a central tracking mechanism showing the current status of every RKN12 project.

It should state what has been approved, tendered, awarded, started, delayed, revised and completed — together with original timelines, updated deadlines and expenditure to date.

Such disclosure would not obstruct development. It would protect successful ministries and contractors from being unfairly grouped with projects that have genuinely disappeared from public view.

It would also allow citizens to distinguish between reasonable delays, technical complications and failures that deserve closer administrative attention.

National development is financed from resources administered for the country and its future generations. Citizens therefore have a legitimate interest in knowing whether publicly announced commitments are being delivered.

In the broader spirit of amanah, Bruneians have every reason to ask whether those resources are being managed carefully and whether national priorities are being delivered as promised.

Transparency is not an accusation. It is the evidence that allows public confidence to survive when timelines change and difficult decisions must be explained.

Ending Note

Tarus hilang is a joke until it is not.

It sounds amusing in an online thread. It becomes considerably less amusing when the missing timeline concerns a kampong flood-mitigation project, a school extension or a health facility.

Bruneians are not asking for less ambition. They are asking that what is started be completed before the next grand undertaking occupies the stage.

That is a modest request, made in the spirit of loyalty rather than grievance: announce responsibly, report honestly and finish what has been promised.

Until the gap between ceremony and delivery closes, even the loudest launch will be followed by the quietest question a citizen can ask:

So — did it happen, or did it tarus hilang?

KopiTalk with MHO

Four Months to Fix Zakat Administration: What Will Success Look Like?

17 years after desperate families crowded into a zakat office, Brunei has been given 4 months to demonstrate change. Progress deserves recognition; promises require proof. The fairest test is simple: establish today’s baseline, publish December’s results, and show whether faster administration, stronger controls and human dignity finally move together in practice.

The clock began on 24 August. Official records already provide years of performance data. The question now is whether clear measurements will show what actually changes by December.

By Malai Hassan Othman

KopiTalk with MHO

BANDAR SERI BEGAWAN, 5 September 2026 — Twelve days have passed since His Majesty Sultan Haji Hassanal Bolkiah gave Brunei’s zakat administrators four months to show results.

The instruction followed an unscheduled visit to the Ministry of Religious Affairs on 24 August, amid renewed concern over zakat administration, financial governance and assistance delivery.

MUIB, the Ministry and JUZWAB were told to reorganise strategies and establish plans, clear targets and effective monitoring mechanisms capable of producing visible results within four months.

That places the first meaningful test around late December.

Twelve days is plainly too early to judge whether the reforms have succeeded. It is not too early, however, to establish how success will eventually be measured.

Brunei already possesses something valuable for doing so: several years of official data showing where zakat administration stood before the latest intervention.

In 2023, average processing time for TPOR applications was about 295 days, according to figures presented during the Legislative Council in August 2025.

During the second half of 2024, the average fell to about 157 days. From January to June 2025, it dropped further to approximately 55 days.

That is substantial progress and deserves acknowledgement.

The improvement was attributed to document pre-screening, an investigation task force, assessment tools and ad-hoc meetings dealing with continuing zakat distributions.

Yet the same official account showed the scale of unfinished work.

As of 10 July 2025, 5,951 applications remained unresolved. Among them, 2,422 were classified as “inquiry”, while more than 2,000 were undergoing investigation or verification.

JUZWAB was receiving an average of 556 applications monthly. Officials acknowledged staffing constraints, incomplete documentation and technology still partly dependent on manual processes.

By March this year, another important change had occurred.

A special task force had resolved 2,380 backlog cases dating from 2020 to 2024 within ten weeks, while inquiry cases reportedly remained below 80 monthly over six months.

These figures complicate any suggestion that nothing has changed.

They show that focused intervention can produce measurable improvement—and establish a credible benchmark for what happens next.

What, then, will be measured during these four months?

A useful starting point already exists within the Government’s own records: pending applications, processing times, ageing cases, monthly inflows and completed applications.

The same principle can extend to financial governance. Identified control weaknesses can be recorded at the beginning of the exercise and their corrective status reported afterwards.

Put simply, establish the before now. Publish the after when the four months are over.

If the numbers improve substantially, the evidence will demonstrate that reforms are working. Where indicators remain difficult, they will identify where further attention is required.

Either outcome would be more useful than judging reform through announcements, impressions or anecdote.

His Majesty’s latest intervention makes measurement particularly relevant because the concerns extend beyond applications taking too long.

The official report of the 24 August visit recorded concerns about financial and administrative governance, complaints and audit findings. It also referred to alleged misconduct potentially involving criminal breach of trust and abuse of power.

According to that report, concerns included fidyah money reportedly kept without receipts or banking records, weaknesses involving zakat receipt books and irregular financial statements covering 2013 to 2020. These were reported concerns, not findings against any person identified in this article.

These matters require careful distinction from ordinary processing delays.

Speed can be measured in days. Financial governance requires stronger controls, reconciliation, traceability, supervision and evidence that identified weaknesses have actually been corrected.

The four-month scorecard therefore cannot reasonably consist only of a shorter queue.

It should also show whether stronger controls are operating, aged cases are declining, transactions are properly accounted for and oversight can identify weaknesses before they escalate.

His Majesty specifically called for KPIs and stressed the oversight responsibilities of MUIB and the Ministry alongside JUZWAB’s operational role.

Technology has repeatedly been presented as part of the solution.

In August 2025, the Religious Affairs Ministry told LegCo that JUZWAB’s reform rested on organisational restructuring, digitalisation, human-resource capacity and data-system monitoring.

Artificial intelligence and blockchain were then at the planning and early-discussion stage, while Microsoft 365 automatic workflows were among the immediate digital measures being introduced.

The ambition was clear: faster verification, more accurate assessment of asnaf eligibility, better analysis of collections and distributions, and more efficient administration.

Technology, however, is an instrument. Its value eventually has to appear somewhere outside the computer.

A digital system can show how long an application has remained unresolved. The management test is whether somebody acts before that waiting time becomes unreasonable.

This matters because zakat forms part of a social-protection system carrying substantial human demand.

Between January 2023 and 24 July 2026, official figures show 22,274 people received assistance through JUZWAB and JAPEM. JUZWAB accounted for 17,428 recipients.

Behind those numbers are households for whom processing time is not an abstract performance indicator.

A family waiting for essential assistance experiences administrative time differently from the institution processing its file. Fifty days on a dashboard can mean fifty mornings of uncertainty.

There is also a longer-term test: whether zakat can help recipients capable of doing so move progressively towards greater independence.

PROPAZ therefore deserves attention within the reform exercise.

During the 24 August visit, His Majesty expressed concern that only 244 asnaf had reportedly achieved independence through PROPAZ over 17 years, averaging about 15 annually.

The figure was set against more than 14,000 fakir miskin, prompting calls for new ideas, stronger collaboration and approaches capable of helping more recipients become independent.

Not every asnaf can, or should be expected to, achieve financial independence. Age, disability, family circumstances and employability make uniform expectations both unrealistic and potentially unfair.

But programmes designed around empowerment should be able to explain what success means, how it is measured and whether successful outcomes are sustained.

That question extends beyond PROPAZ.

Brunei’s zakat administration therefore has an unusual opportunity: it need not wait until December to define what success should mean.

Publish a current baseline for unresolved applications, case age, processing time, monthly inflows, completions, control weaknesses and remedial action.

Aggregate performance data can preserve applicants’ confidentiality while allowing MUIB, KHEU and JUZWAB to demonstrate progress in terms understandable to the people they serve.

A clear starting point would also ensure that genuine improvements achieved during these four months are recognised when December arrives.

Our earlier report argued that four months cannot solve every structural problem surrounding poverty, welfare dependency or asnaf empowerment. That assessment remains valid.

The latest exercise, however, is not beginning from zero.

JUZWAB has been a full department since 2023. Its establishment itself was intended to make zakat distribution and related programmes more effective and efficient.

Processing times have since improved. Thousands of historical cases have been addressed, while digitalisation has progressively entered the system.

Fair scrutiny should recognise those gains.

It should equally recognise why another intervention became necessary despite them.

His Majesty has now required clear targets, action plans, monitoring and results within four months. The familiar language of improvement has therefore acquired something it previously lacked: a clock.

Judgement need not be rushed simply because that clock is running.

For now, the fairest test of seriousness may also be the simplest: define the starting line, make success measurable, then let the results speak in December.

 

Source Note

This report draws principally on Ministry of Religious Affairs, Majlis Ugama Islam Brunei and JUZWAB records; Legislative Council reporting from August 2025 and March 2026; and the official account of the 24 August 2026 visit. Historical figures retain their stated reporting periods and should not be read as current unless expressly identified as such.

When the Air Becomes Unsafe: Borneo’s Haze and ASEAN’s Recurring Failure

When children are sent home because the air is unsafe, haze is no longer a seasonal inconvenience. It is a regional failure. After two decades of ASEAN agreements, Brunei must ask: who profits, who is accountable, and why must innocent lungs continue paying the price for preventable fires across borders?

Brunei’s schools have shifted home, public health is threatened, and smoke again crosses borders. After decades of regional promises, ASEAN must explain what will change this time.

By Malai Hassan Othman

Children in Brunei were sent home early on 1 September as deteriorating air quality turned an environmental emergency beyond our borders into an immediate national concern.

Government and private educational institutions were subsequently advised to implement home-based learning from 2 to 3 September, after official readings entered very unhealthy territory.

The decision was prudent. It was also disturbing evidence that transboundary haze is no longer merely obscuring skylines. It is disrupting education, threatening health and narrowing everyday life.

At 4pm on 1 September, Brunei-Muara recorded a Pollutant Standard Index reading of 215, while Belait reached 211, according to official monitoring.

Tutong registered 168 and Temburong 164. Under Brunei’s classification, readings between 101 and 200 are unhealthy, while anything exceeding 200 ranges from very unhealthy to hazardous.

These figures matter more than social media photographs. They establish that Brunei was not merely experiencing reduced visibility, but breathing air officially judged harmful.

The Ministry of Health warned that haze exposure could cause coughing, eye irritation and runny noses, while aggravating asthma, lung disease and existing heart conditions.

People were advised to limit outdoor activities, remain hydrated, use appropriate masks when necessary, and seek treatment if persistent coughing or breathing difficulties developed.

This is where the diplomatic language surrounding transboundary haze must meet its human consequences: children indoors, vulnerable patients at risk, workers exposed and families watching the sky.

Smoke Without Borders

Regional monitoring indicates that widespread fires across Kalimantan and Sumatra have produced moderate-to-dense smoke, carried by prevailing winds across northern Borneo.

The ASEAN Specialised Meteorological Centre reported widespread hotspot activity over Kalimantan and Sumatra, alongside unhealthy to hazardous air quality across parts of Borneo.

Hotspots are satellite detections indicating possible fires. They are not automatically separate confirmed blazes, and totals vary according to cloud cover, satellite passes and reporting periods.

That qualification, however, does not make the crisis less serious. It makes careful reporting essential when numbers are changing almost as rapidly as the wind.

Sarawak Disaster Management Committee chairman Datuk Amar Douglas Uggah Embas said 1,180 hotspots were detected across Kalimantan on 29 August, compared with only nine in Sarawak, as smoke moved towards Malaysian territory.

Uggah told reporters after the same SDMC briefing that Kalimantan had recorded 15,587 hotspot detections over that period, including 13,212 during August alone, revealing an extraordinary concentration during the dry season.

Indonesia’s fires are not exclusively a neighbouring-country inconvenience. Indonesian communities are breathing the same smoke, enduring school disruption, respiratory illnesses, dangerous visibility and environmental destruction.

The crisis has also devastated forests and wildlife. Reuters documented the rescue of an orangutan near a palm-oil plantation in Ketapang, West Kalimantan.

The animal was treated for hypoxia linked to thick smoke and showed signs of an acute respiratory infection, according to the attending veterinarian.

That shared suffering matters. This should not become an exercise in blaming ordinary Indonesians, just as legitimate regional concern should not be silenced by diplomatic sensitivity.

Not Simply the Farmers’ Fault

Land-clearing fires are frequently associated with agriculture. Yet blaming “the farming community” collectively would oversimplify a complex chain of land ownership, commercial interests and regulatory failure.

Smallholders may use fire because it is cheap. Plantation operators, concession holders, illegal land clearers and other commercial actors may also benefit from cleared land.

Drained peatlands make the danger worse. Once ignited, peat can smoulder underground, resist conventional firefighting and release enormous quantities of smoke over extended periods.

Prolonged dry weather and strengthening El Niño conditions intensify the emergency. But drought does not strike a match, drain peatland or excuse weak enforcement.

The weather may explain why fires spread so quickly. It cannot, by itself, explain why the same preventable catastrophe repeatedly returns to the region.

Indonesian authorities have deployed personnel, aircraft, water-bombing operations and weather-modification measures. Suspects have been arrested, while companies connected with affected concessions are being investigated.

Indonesian officials told Reuters that 19 companies were under investigation over fires affecting more than 11,000 hectares. Authorities had identified 42 companies for scrutiny.

These actions deserve recognition. They also invite an unavoidable question: why must large-scale investigations and emergency mobilisation repeatedly begin after the smoke has already crossed borders?

Firefighting helicopters are indispensable during an emergency. They are not substitutes for year-round peatland restoration, transparent concession monitoring, enforceable corporate responsibility and credible prosecution.

Brunei and Malaysia Turn to ASEAN

The haze was discussed during the 27th Annual Leaders’ Consultation between Brunei Darussalam and Malaysia in Bandar Seri Begawan on 22 August.

His Majesty Sultan Haji Hassanal Bolkiah Mu’izzaddin Waddaulah and Malaysian Prime Minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim agreed to utilise ASEAN mechanisms in addressing the transboundary emergency.

Anwar subsequently said Malaysia’s Foreign Minister, Datuk Seri Mohamad Hasan, had been asked to manage the matter through the established regional diplomatic framework.

This was neither the creation of a “Borneo Bloc” nor an alliance against Indonesia. It was two affected neighbours acknowledging that smoke cannot be negotiated away bilaterally.

Brunei does not share a land border with Kalimantan. It shares Borneo, regional air currents and the consequences when fires elsewhere overwhelm political boundaries.

Malaysia and Brunei therefore have every right to raise the matter firmly. Their citizens should not be expected to accept hazardous air as an annual cost of regional neighbourliness.

Yet invoking ASEAN is only the beginning. The real test is whether ASEAN’s machinery can produce action beyond monitoring, ministerial discussions and carefully negotiated expressions of concern.

A Treaty Older Than Today’s Schoolchildren

ASEAN members signed the Agreement on Transboundary Haze Pollution in 2002. It entered into force in 2003 and eventually secured ratification from every member state.

The agreement was presented as a landmark regional commitment to prevent, monitor and mitigate land and forest fires through national action and international co-operation.

ASEAN now also has a Second Haze-Free Roadmap, covering 2023 to 2030, with the declared vision of achieving a transboundary haze-free region.

The architecture is therefore not absent. ASEAN has an agreement, specialist monitoring centre, ministerial structures, roadmaps, targets, technical programmes and years of accumulated experience.

The unresolved test is whether these instruments can produce measurable prevention and accountability when neighbouring populations repeatedly pay the price.

Without transparent compliance measures and publicly traceable national obligations, a legally binding agreement risks becoming stronger in ceremony than in effect.

What Brunei Should Ask

Brunei should support Indonesia’s firefighting and prevention efforts while pressing ASEAN for measurable outcomes, rather than another cycle of emergency meetings followed by seasonal forgetfulness.

Regional authorities should publish harmonised, time-stamped hotspot data, concession ownership information, burned-area assessments, enforcement actions and progress against the Haze-Free Roadmap.

ASEAN should establish clearer thresholds for requesting assistance, activating emergency co-ordination and reviewing whether affected member states have fulfilled their prevention and enforcement responsibilities.

Companies controlling fire-affected concessions should be identified through credible investigations. Penalties, restoration obligations and prosecution outcomes should be reported, not buried after visibility improves.

Affected countries must also examine whether their own investors, financiers, commodity buyers or supply chains are connected to land-use practices contributing to the fires.

Responsibility may begin where the fire is lit, but accountability can extend through boardrooms, lenders, contractors and markets well beyond the burned landscape.

Brunei, meanwhile, should not wait for another PSI spike before strengthening the protective framework tested by this episode.

The Government should publish a clear escalation protocol linking PSI levels and health risk to decisions on home-based learning, outdoor activity and workplace protection.

The protocol should identify who decides, when each measure activates and which institutions and workers are covered, reducing uncertainty as air quality deteriorates.

Standing haze measures should protect outdoor and construction workers, while suitable masks should remain readily accessible through health centres when conditions worsen.

Home-based learning protects children during dangerous conditions. It cannot erase the educational disruption, unequal household circumstances or working parents’ difficulties created by sudden closures.

Official communication should remain frequent and consistent, using Brunei’s PSI rather than mixing it with foreign AQI systems that employ different scales and measurements.

The Air Is a Shared Responsibility

No country controls the wind. Every government, however, retains responsibility for preventing activities within its jurisdiction from inflicting foreseeable harm upon neighbouring populations.

Indonesia cannot prevent every accidental fire across its vast territory. Its regional partners cannot reasonably demand perfection during increasingly severe climatic conditions.

They can reasonably demand prevention, transparency, early intervention, corporate accountability and evidence that lessons from previous emergencies have produced stronger enforcement before the next dry season.

Brunei and Malaysia have correctly taken the matter to ASEAN. Now ASEAN must show that its mechanisms protect lungs as effectively as its communiqués protect diplomatic language.

When schoolchildren are ordered home because the air outside has become unsafe, the haze has already moved beyond an environmental statistic or seasonal irritation.

It has become a public-health emergency, an educational disruption, an economic burden and a direct test of whether regional co-operation carries consequences.

The smoke will eventually clear. Skies will brighten, schools will reopen, and the emergency will gradually disappear from headlines and official social media feeds.

That familiar return to normality is precisely where failure usually begins—when urgency fades, accountability weakens, and prevention is postponed until satellites detect the next fires.

Brunei should not seek confrontation. But neither should neighbourliness require silence while its children, elderly citizens and vulnerable patients repeatedly breathe the consequences of preventable burning.

After more than two decades of ASEAN agreements and roadmaps, the region owes its people something more substantial than another promise to discuss the smoke.

It owes them clean air—and proof that those responsible for poisoning it will no longer find accountability disappearing as quickly as the haze.

When the Khutbah Struck a Public Nerve

A khutbah against bullying struck a deeper public nerve. Beyond classrooms and social media, many recognised the quieter cruelty of power misused—behind desks, inside offices and through systems difficult to question. When compassion is preached, but authority becomes toxic, who protects those too vulnerable to speak or be heard?

COMMENTARY

Bruneians were urged to reject bullying and spread compassion. The reaction showed that many understood its message far beyond the school gate.

By Malai Hassan Othman  |  KopiTalk with MHO

The khutbah spoke about bullying. The public heard something larger.

Delivered across Brunei on 28 August, the Friday sermon urged Muslims to reject intimidation, oppression and cruelty while spreading compassion throughout society.

Its message extended beyond classrooms, identifying schools, workplaces, families and online spaces as environments in which bullying can occur.

That breadth may explain why the khutbah struck such a powerful chord with public sentiment.

Soon after its message circulated, an online discussion moved rapidly from school bullying towards workplaces, businesses, public-facing services and institutional authority.

The discussion offered insufficient verifiable evidence from which broader conclusions could safely be drawn. Its significance lay instead in the experiences and perceptions brought to the surface.

Many contributors appeared to recognise the same underlying pattern: a stronger party exercising power over someone who feels unable to resist without risking further harm.

The sermon did not create that sentiment. It gave existing frustrations a moral vocabulary through which they could be expressed.

Beyond the School Gate

Bullying is commonly imagined as something children do to other children—inside classrooms, along corridors, on playing fields or increasingly through mobile telephones.

Its visible forms are easily recognised: physical aggression, insults, threats, humiliation, exclusion and the deliberate targeting of someone perceived as weaker.

But bullying does not disappear when school ends. It changes its clothes.

For a student, power may come from physical strength, popularity or the protection of a group. For an employee, it may come from rank.

For a contractor, power may lie with whoever controls an approval or payment. For an applicant, it may rest behind a counter or desk.

The common thread is not merely conflict. It is the imbalance that leaves one party feeling unable to respond without inviting greater difficulty.

The line is crossed when authority becomes intimidation, explanation gives way to humiliation, or questioning a decision appears likely to invite retaliation.

That is when authority ceases to feel like responsibility and begins to feel like coercion.

The Little Napoleon Behind the Desk

The public reaction recalled a figure KopiTalk with MHO has examined before: the so-called “Little Napoleon”.

This is rarely someone occupying the highest office. The authority may be modest, but its consequences can be considerable for those affected.

The “Little Napoleon” treats delegated responsibility as personal territory. Rules become weapons, procedure becomes a barrier, and service becomes a demonstration of control.

He—or she—may hide behind regulations without explaining them, impose requirements inconsistently or prolong a process because nobody lower down can challenge the decision.

The problem begins when limited authority is exercised without amanah, proportion, transparency or regard for its human consequences.

For the officer, it may be one more file awaiting attention. For the person outside, that file may determine whether a livelihood survives.

A delayed approval can prevent a business from opening. An unexplained payment delay can affect workers, suppliers and families far removed from the original transaction.

A junior employee repeatedly humiliated by a superior may continue reporting for duty because resignation would place the household’s income at risk.

The outward forms differ from school bullying. The inner experience—dependency, fear, humiliation and powerlessness—may feel disturbingly familiar.

When Rules Become Weapons

Rules are essential. They protect fairness only when they are applied fairly.

When requirements change without adequate explanation, or similar cases receive different treatment, people may begin to suspect that procedure depends upon personality.

When follow-up questions are treated as disrespect, the public may learn that silence is safer than seeking clarification.

When complaints return to the same office or superior being questioned, confidence in the process can weaken, however orderly the procedure may appear internally.

Trust is rarely destroyed by one dramatic incident. It is worn down through unanswered correspondence, unexplained delays and the feeling that nobody owns the problem.

An institution may consider its decision lawful and procedurally correct. The person affected may still experience the process as dismissive and demeaning.

That distinction sits close to the heart of the khutbah’s message.

Compassion is not simply feeling sorry for someone after harm has occurred. It means exercising power carefully enough to prevent unnecessary harm.

Public Service Is Still Service

Brunei’s public service is not a single, unfeeling structure.

Thousands of officers fulfil their responsibilities conscientiously, often under workloads, procedural limitations and manpower constraints invisible to members of the public.

Many serve with professionalism, patience and courtesy. Some resolve difficult cases quietly without ever receiving recognition for doing their jobs well.

The concern is whether poor conduct and defective processes are identified before isolated failures become accepted workplace culture.

An officer who humiliates the public damages more than one person’s day. The encounter can influence how a family, business or community views the institution.

People rarely separate the individual behind the counter from the organisation whose name appears above it.

Service standards must therefore measure more than whether a form was processed. They must also consider clarity, consistency, responsiveness and dignity.

Efficiency without humanity can still leave the public feeling badly served.

Not Government Alone

The online discussion produced an important counterpoint. Some contributors believed bullying and exploitation were equally serious within private workplaces.

They described low pay, excessive workloads, arbitrary contract changes, humiliation by supervisors and fear of losing employment for questioning management.

Their accounts widened the conversation beyond government.

Bullying can emerge in public offices, private companies, schools, families, associations and online communities.

It can flow from employer to employee, supervisor to subordinate, teacher to student, senior colleague to junior colleague—or sometimes in the opposite direction.

Members of the public can also bully frontline officers through verbal abuse, threats and viral accusations released before the full circumstances are understood.

Compassion cannot be demanded only from whichever side we support. The same moral standard must protect the citizen facing authority and the officer facing abuse.

It must defend employees from humiliation while allowing managers to uphold genuine standards and responsibilities.

The Silence Around Workplace Bullying

KopiTalk with MHO previously examined workplace harassment and the fear surrounding those who consider speaking out.

The recurring concerns were unequal authority, possible retaliation, uncertain reporting channels and anxiety that lodging a complaint could damage future employment.

These concerns help explain why adult bullying is often harder to see.

A bruised child may attract immediate attention. An employee who has been systematically isolated, belittled or undermined may continue appearing at work as usual.

Victims may question whether the conduct is serious enough to report. They may also wonder whether witnesses will support them when livelihoods are involved.

Some organisations have complaint mechanisms on paper. Their effectiveness depends upon whether employees trust the people receiving and investigating those complaints.

A reporting channel is not credible merely because an email address, hotline or form exists.

People need to know how confidentiality is protected, when a response can be expected and whether the reviewer is sufficiently independent.

Silence does not necessarily mean nothing happened. Sometimes, it means the affected person believes speaking will make the situation worse.

What Children Learn From Adults

In September 2025, His Majesty declared that bullying and unacceptable behaviour had no place in Brunei’s culture.

That message followed official figures showing 447 reported school-bullying cases in 2024, down from 734 during the previous year.

Government responded with disciplinary procedures, counselling, monitoring and programmes intended to strengthen empathy, intervention and student responsibility.

Those measures addressed an acknowledged problem among young people. The latest khutbah invites reflection upon the adult environments those students will eventually enter.

What happens when a child taught not to bully joins a workplace where public humiliation is regarded as normal leadership?

What happens when students are encouraged to report intimidation, but adults believe reporting workplace mistreatment may jeopardise their careers?

What lesson is absorbed when compassion is taught as personal morality but is not consistently experienced in positions of authority?

Children learn from instructions. They also learn from the society surrounding them.

A national stand against bullying must examine not only student behaviour, but also the adult behaviour children observe and may eventually inherit.

From Sermon to System

The khutbah urged witnesses not to remain silent, merely observe or ridicule victims. Instead, they should intervene appropriately and report bullying responsibly.

That advice carries an institutional obligation.

People can only report confidently when accessible channels exist, evidence is treated fairly and protection against retaliation is more than an assurance.

The challenge is to distinguish legitimate authority from intimidation—and ordinary procedural difficulty from recurring misuse of power.

Clearer service timelines, written explanations, credible appeals, protected workplace reporting and supervisory accountability would help draw that distinction.

Leadership must also recognise that dignity is part of organisational performance, not an optional courtesy offered when workloads permit.

The Islamic principle of ihsan provides a deeper measure. Competence asks whether the work was completed. Ihsan asks how conscientiously and humanely it was done.

Without ihsan, rules can become walls. Authority can lose its conscience, and service can forget the people it was established to serve.

Why the Khutbah Resonated

Moral guidance cannot be restricted to the least powerful members of society.

If bullying involves exploiting strength against someone less able to defend himself, its warning applies wherever power becomes detached from compassion.

It applies to students and teachers, managers and employees, institutions and citizens, parents and children—and social-media users shielded by anonymity.

Beneath the online anger was a concern worth stating plainly: some people do not believe they have somewhere credible to turn, or that those holding power will listen.

The khutbah struck that chord directly.

It asked Bruneians to examine bullying. The online response suggested that society may still struggle to recognise it once the bully is no longer wearing a school uniform.

That recognition should begin with ensuring that none of us—individuals, managers or institutions—uses power in ways that deny others dignity, explanation and fair recourse.

A mirror serves little purpose when it is always pointed at someone else.

Source Note

Principal references and earlier reporting:

• Ministry of Religious Affairs: Friday khutbah summary, 28 August 2026

• Media Permata: ‘Jauhi buli, sebarkan kasih sayang’

• Reddit / r/nasikatok: Public discussion prompted by the khutbah

• KopiTalk with MHO: ‘Bullying Has No Place Here’

• KopiTalk with MHO: ‘Sexual Harassment Cases Double’

• KopiTalk with MHO: ‘Little Napoleons and Red Tape’

A Job, a Home, a Future: The Real Test of 2035

 KopiTalk LegCo Tracker · Second Meeting — Special Report

Reading the Signals. Testing the Delivery.

Brunei’s road to 2035 will not be measured by statistics alone. Can a job become a career, an income build security, and a family afford a home? LegCo’s debate on purchasing power, employment and housing raises a deeper question: are we merely sustaining lives — or enabling futures worth building?

LegCo raised three everyday concerns — purchasing power, employment and housing. Behind them lies a bigger question: is Brunei creating the economic conditions citizens need to build the high quality of life envisioned for 2035?

By Malai Hassan Othman · KopiTalk with MHO

BANDAR SERI BEGAWAN — Brunei has nine years remaining to realise Wawasan 2035. For ordinary citizens, however, that future is already being built — or postponed — today.

The Second Meeting of the 22nd Legislative Council brought that reality into sharp focus through three familiar concerns: cost of living, employment and housing.

Yang Berhormat Awang Amran bin Haji Maidin, Penghulu Mukim Lumapas – Daerah Brunei dan Muara, brought the three together during debate on the fifth day of proceedings.

His benchmark was not whether Bruneians could simply survive.

It was whether they could save, own homes, raise families and plan their futures — the ordinary foundations of a stable life.

That distinction matters because Brunei's national ambition is considerably higher than providing enough for people merely to get by.

Wawasan 2035 seeks a highly educated and skilled population, a high quality of life, and an economy that is dynamic and resilient.

Its quality-of-life framework includes a high standard of living, high home ownership, social mobility, quality infrastructure and excellence in public-service delivery.

The question emerging from LegCo, therefore, reaches beyond whether groceries cost more, enough vacancies exist or sufficient houses are being constructed.

It asks whether the economic environment is strong enough to turn education and work into income, security, home ownership and upward mobility.

On living costs, Awang Amran acknowledged forces Brunei cannot completely control, including global economic conditions, transportation costs, supply chains and currency movements.

But households experience those pressures differently. Families on fixed incomes feel increases in food, transport, education and everyday necessities directly through what remains each month.

His argument shifted the discussion from prices towards purchasing power.

Prices cannot always be controlled, he said, but people's ability to meet living costs can be strengthened through better employment, skills and opportunities for higher incomes.

That matters because cost of living is not determined by prices alone. It also reflects what people earn, what Government cushions and what households ultimately pay themselves.

Brunei has long recognised that relationship.

In 1998, Government introduced Elaun Sara Hidup across much of the public service specifically to assist with living costs, particularly benefiting lower-paid employees.

The allowance was graduated. Division IV and below received B$140 monthly, before the Government increased the amount to B$170 in 2006 while other divisional rates remained unchanged.

The significance is not whether that historical allowance should automatically be increased today. The available documents alone do not establish sufficient grounds for that conclusion.

What the policy history demonstrates is more fundamental: Government recognised that living-cost pressures fall differently across income levels and may require targeted intervention.

Two decades later, LegCo is again asking how purchasing power can be strengthened — this time by connecting it directly with employment and income progression.

Here, the debate became sharper.

Awang Amran questioned whether available opportunities genuinely enable Bruneians to improve their skills, progress professionally and increase their incomes over time.

His distinction was simple: “Pekerjaan memberikan pendapatan hari ini, tetapi kerjaya memberikan masa depan.”

A job provides income today. A career provides a future.

For years, unemployment has understandably dominated employment discussions. But reducing unemployment alone does not establish whether available jobs can support increasingly independent lives.

Employment becomes transformative when experience builds skills, productivity supports better earnings and those earnings give households sufficient room to progress.

Without that progression, somebody can be statistically employed while remaining economically constrained — neither necessarily poor nor sufficiently secure to build the future envisaged.

Wawasan's three goals — skilled people, high quality of life and a dynamic, resilient economy — may appear separately on paper, but economically they depend upon one another.

Skills need productive opportunities. Businesses need investment and competitiveness. Workers need career progression. Households need incomes capable of supporting increasingly independent lives.

That is where housing enters the equation.

Awang Amran argued that housing should remain part of family-welfare policy rather than being regarded simply as another physical development programme.

For younger Bruneians establishing families, suitable housing provides stability. Excessive housing costs, however, can reduce what households have available for other necessities.

His proposed measurement was revealing.

Success should not be judged only by how many houses are built, but by how many families obtain appropriate, comfortable housing within their means.

That changes the measurement from construction to outcome.

A completed house represents an output. A household capable of sustaining that home while meeting other responsibilities represents something considerably closer to development.

That distinction also surfaced elsewhere during the Second Meeting.

Yang Berhormat Awang Lau How Teck, S.N.B., P.S.B., cautioned against measuring success merely through completed projects or implemented programmes, asking whether they increased productivity and created continuing economic opportunities.

The Government's closing assessment similarly acknowledged that today's development challenges increasingly overlap — linking education with employment, economic growth with productivity, and social wellbeing with housing and protection.

Therein lies the larger issue beneath cost of living, employment and housing.

Brunei does not lack policy interventions. Government cushions important household costs, provides extensive public services, develops housing, supports employment programmes and continues pursuing economic diversification.

Those interventions provide a substantial social cushion.

But cushioning household costs and creating greater household earning power are not quite the same thing.

The first protects living standards. The second enables citizens to progressively build those standards through productive incomes, careers, assets and savings.

For Wawasan 2035, Brunei needs both.

The question is whether the wider economy is becoming strong enough to generate productive incomes capable of supporting greater household independence and resilience.

That depends partly upon what happens beyond Government.

Businesses require productivity and revenue to sustain better wages. Investment must create lasting domestic value, while local enterprises need sufficient competitiveness to create careers rather than vacancies.

Individuals also carry responsibilities through education, skills, adaptability, financial discipline and realistic expectations. Government cannot manufacture prosperity for every household.

But individual effort operates within an environment citizens cannot create themselves. Labour markets, wage structures, housing supply and economic diversification ultimately involve policy, investment and business conditions.

This is why LegCo's three concerns should not be treated merely as separate responsibilities distributed among different ministries.

They are three tests of the same environment.

Does work provide pathways towards better incomes? Can those incomes build security? Can households translate that security into homes, families, savings and reasonable confidence about tomorrow?

If those answers strengthen over the coming nine years, Wawasan's high-quality-of-life ambition becomes considerably more tangible.

If they do not, Government may continue recording jobs created, houses completed and programmes delivered while households experience progress rather differently.

None of this establishes that Brunei faces a general cost-of-living crisis. The LegCo record does not support such a conclusion.

It establishes something more nuanced: legislators are questioning whether people's ability to meet living costs can be strengthened through better jobs, income progression and affordable housing.

That is ultimately a question of economic transmission.

Brunei can attract investment — but does sufficient value reach Bruneian careers and incomes?

It can build houses — but can households sustainably afford the lives built around them?

It can cushion living costs — but is the productive economy increasingly capable of supporting the standard of living citizens expect?

Those are legitimate questions nine years from 2035.

The Second Meeting itself concluded with Government emphasising that policies and initiatives must produce efficient services, quality employment, conducive business conditions and solutions affecting everyday life.

That provides perhaps the most appropriate benchmark.

National rankings measure progress from above.

Households experience it from below.

By 2035, policymakers will have indicators, rankings, programmes and performance measures with which to assess how far Brunei has travelled.

Ordinary Bruneians will probably use simpler measurements.

Did education lead somewhere? Did a job become a career? Did income grow? Could a family obtain a suitable home?

Could it save, withstand setbacks and plan confidently for tomorrow?

Individual choices will influence those answers. But they will also reflect the economy and policy environment Brunei builds around its people.

That may be the deeper message behind LegCo's discussion of living costs, employment and housing.

Wawasan 2035 envisages people who are skilled and successful, enjoying high-quality lives within a dynamic and resilient economy.

The real test is whether ordinary Bruneians are being given the economic conditions to build that life for themselves.

SOURCE NOTE

Second Meeting of the 22nd Legislative Council proceedings and official Council reporting, August 2026; Wawasan Brunei 2035 official framework; Prime Minister's Office Circular No. 12/1998 and Circular No. 15/2006 on Elaun Sara Hidup.