Painkillers for patience

 

NICEe’s real test begins after intervention

A child gets screened. A referral follows. Help may arrive. But what happens when preschool begins? Brunei’s new NICEe promises a bridge between early intervention and education. The real test lies beyond its doors: whether support follows every child, across ministries, districts and classrooms, without leaving families to navigate alone.

 

 KOPITALK WITH MHO  |  TEACHERS’ DAY REPORT, PART TWO

A new centre for children aged two to four arrives as demand on existing services rises. Whether support follows each child into preschool will decide its worth.

 

By Malai Hassan Othman

 

BERAKAS, 25 September 2026 — A child is screened, referred and given developmental support. Then comes another question for the family: what happens when it is time for early education?

That is the larger test facing the National Intervention Centre for Early Childhood Education, or NICEe, approved by His Majesty Sultan Haji Hassanal Bolkiah Mu’izzaddin Waddaulah, Sultan and Yang Di-Pertuan of Brunei Darussalam, at Wednesday’s 36th Teachers’ Day celebration.

Under the titah, the centre is intended for children aged two to four and is due to begin in 2027. The education, health, culture, youth and sports, and home affairs ministries will jointly lead it.

NICEe arrives amid rising demand. In March 2025, Health Minister Dato Seri Setia Dr Haji Mohammad Isham bin Haji Jaafar told the Legislative Council that referrals to doctors at the Child Development Centre, or CDC, rose from 400 in 2010 to 1,056 in 2024. Dr Hajah Mawarni binti Haji Abdul Hamid, head of the CDC, reported 957 referrals in 2023.

The Minister acknowledged that the increase had affected waiting times, calling it a challenge in ensuring each child receives intervention promptly, and said the ministry would review additional needs, including manpower and space.

At a paediatric symposium in September 2023, Dr Mawarni reported waits ranging from a few days to seven months for a CDC doctor’s appointment. Autism assessments could take longer, she said, and staff numbers had not kept pace with demand.

The strain is felt at home. One parent told KopiTalk of a long wait before their child could be seen at the CDC. For a family, an appointment delayed by months can mean lost time at an age when developmental support may make a difference. The question is whether more capacity can reach children sooner.

In December 2024, Dr Mawarni said about 16 per cent of the roughly 6,300 children born in Brunei each year are referred to the CDC. The figure indicates the scale of demand, although referrals span different ages and cannot establish the proportion of any one birth cohort needing the service. They exclude children referred to the hospital in Kuala Belait.

About 55 per cent of CDC referrals involved speech delay and about 25 per cent involved signs of autism, she said. These were reasons for referral, not confirmed diagnoses.

But waiting for intervention is only one part of a child’s journey. The next challenge is carrying the support a child needs into preschool, without leaving parents to manage each handover themselves.

Brunei already has early intervention services. The Ministry of Health lists an Early Developmental Programme at the CDC in Kiarong, alongside medical assessment, psychology, speech and language therapy, audiology, physiotherapy, occupational therapy and medical social work.

The CDC was established in 1999. When it moved into its Kiarong premises in 2021, its early developmental programme was described as serving children with special needs under five. NICEe’s proposed two-to-four age range therefore overlaps work already being done.

That overlap need not be a problem. Dr Mawarni has described the CDC’s approach as one involving the immediate family, education, welfare and non-governmental organisations. NICEe could extend that link between developmental care and education, if each service has a clear role and a child’s support continues across them.

The titah points the same way. His Majesty spoke of strengthening the early intervention system — memperkukuh sistem intervensi awal kanak-kanak — rather than simply adding a facility. A system is judged by how its parts connect.

The Ministry of Education runs assessment, intervention and specialist services of its own. Its primary education pathway includes preschool, generally attended at age five. NICEe would sit in the years immediately before that transition.

That positioning suggests a purpose larger than providing another place for intervention. It could help children build the skills and confidence to learn, while preparing teachers and families for their entry into preschool.

Could is the important word. Details have yet to be announced on whether children will move from the CDC to NICEe, receive support from both, or reach NICEe through preschools and childcare centres.

Nor has it yet been set out who will coordinate assessments, explain options to parents or ensure that relevant support plans reach a child’s next teacher. Those details will determine whether the services form a pathway.

The Ministry of Health has already expanded early detection. By March 2025, the Health Minister told the Legislative Council, 3,127 toddlers had been screened using an autism screening checklist, and 100 had been referred to the CDC for further assessment.

A referral is not a diagnosis. Nor does the figure tell us how many children need NICEe. It does show why a system that identifies needs early must be able to respond to them.

Families may also seek help from non-governmental organisations listed by the Department of Community Development, such as KACA, Pusat Ehsan and SMARTER. Their work broadens the support available, but no published national figure shows how many two-to-four-year-olds need places or where provision falls short.

CDC registrations also point to a continuing caseload. Dr Mawarni reported 7,493 children registered since 2010, with 6,797 holding active appointments in December 2023. Active appointments include ongoing care; they are not a count of children awaiting a first assessment.

That matters when the promise is equitable access. Figures have yet to be announced on how many children NICEe can serve, which specialists will work there, and whether it will add capacity to the system or draw on staff already serving children elsewhere.

Location will matter just as much. The CDC is in Kiarong, and some children in Belait are referred to the hospital in Kuala Belait instead. NICEe’s site and arrangements for families in Belait, Tutong and Temburong have yet to be announced.

A service can be available nationally yet hard for a family to use regularly if travel, appointments and school arrangements must all be managed at a distance.

At the Teachers’ Day celebration, Education Minister Yang Berhormat Datin Seri Setia Dr Hajah Romaizah binti Haji Mohd Salleh said four ministries had begun developing a national early childhood care and education framework for children from birth to five: Education, Religious Affairs, Culture, Youth and Sports, and Health.

The framework covers early care and education, health, nutrition, family protection and Melayu Islam Beraja values. It includes NICEe’s age group, but the lead ministries are not identical: Religious Affairs sits on the framework, Home Affairs on the centre. How the two will operate together has yet to be set out.

Timing is why these details matter. Dr Mawarni has said early intervention can bring developmental change while a child’s nervous system is still malleable and responsive.

His Majesty’s aim is clear: inclusive early education should give every child, regardless of background or ability, an equal opportunity to develop. The centre offers a chance to make that commitment tangible.

For parents, the measure will be the whole journey: prompt assessment, suitable help, and support that follows the child into the classroom.

 

Sources

Titah of His Majesty at the 36th Teachers’ Day celebration, 23 September 2026, and the Minister of Education’s address at the same event.

Legislative Council Hansard, 13 March 2025 (Minister of Health on CDC referrals, waiting times and autism screening).

Borneo Bulletin, 11 September 2023 (Paediatric Symposium) and 7 December 2023 (CDC caseload figures).

The Scoop, 2 December 2024 (CDC referral rates and reasons for referral).

Ministry of Health and Ministry of Education websites; Department of Community Development list of NGOs; Pelita Brunei (CDC Kiarong premises, 2021).

Teachers got their applause. Pupils got promising PISA headlines. A new centre got the royal go-ahead. But when a teacher is away, who gets the extra class? His Majesty has called for better management of relief teachers. The real report card begins when the ceremony ends and Monday’s timetable lands.

KopiTalk with MHO

Sultan calls for better relief-teacher management as early intervention centre gets go-ahead

At the 36th Teachers’ Day celebration, His Majesty links teachers’ wellbeing to classroom learning and approves an early intervention centre for children aged two to four.

BERAKAS, 24 September 2026 — His Majesty Sultan Haji Hassanal Bolkiah Mu’izzaddin Waddaulah called for better management of relief teachers to protect teachers’ wellbeing and the quality of lessons.

Speaking at Brunei’s 36th Teachers’ Day celebration at the International Convention Centre yesterday, the Sultan also approved an early childhood education intervention centre for children aged two to four from 2027.

His Majesty said the burden of teaching and other duties had long received his serious attention. Teachers’ wellbeing would remain a government priority, he said, urging integrated and effective improvements to the management of Guru Relif.

The titah did not spell out the changes envisaged. How relief cover is organised affects teachers called upon to fill gaps, their absent colleagues and pupils whose lessons must continue.

His Majesty linked teacher commitment to pupils’ success. Citing PISA 2025, the OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment, he said Brunei pupils rated teacher support more positively than the OECD average.

The OECD’s country note bears this out. In science lessons, 85 per cent said teachers gave extra help when needed, against an OECD average of 73 per cent. Eighty-two per cent said teachers continued until pupils understood.

His Majesty also praised Brunei’s showing in computational problem-solving: more than 70 per cent of pupils performed above expectations, placing the country second on that measure. The OECD puts the share at 80.5 per cent, second among 84 systems.

This compares performance with what pupils’ science results would predict. Brunei’s average computational problem-solving score was 496, below the OECD average of 500. The second-place ranking is a relative-performance measure, not an overall subject ranking.

His Majesty said Brunei was among a few countries where performance had improved in science, mathematics and reading. The OECD reports significant gains in science and reading against 2018, Brunei’s first PISA cycle. Against 2022, mathematics fell while science and reading were broadly unchanged.

Congratulating teachers, His Majesty said those gains could not have been achieved without their commitment and sacrifice. Their amanah extended beyond knowledge and technology to forming pupils’ character, conduct and values.

He urged the education and religious affairs ministries to refine the curriculum together and strengthen good values and Melayu Islam Beraja ethics from primary school, when character formation begins.

That emphasis on the early years led to the announcement of the National Intervention Centre for Early Childhood Education, or NICEe, for children aged two to four from 2027.

His Majesty said inclusive early education should offer every child, regardless of background or ability, an equal chance to develop. The education, health, culture, youth and sports, and home affairs ministries will jointly lead the centre.

The titah gave no location, capacity, referral route or list of services. These details will determine how families obtain help and whether children in every district can reach it.

The celebration, themed “Guru Pemangkin Pendidikan Lestari dan Inovasi” (Teachers as Catalysts for Sustainable Education and Innovation), honoured 43 recipients in four award categories. His Majesty presented the awards and toured a nine-booth exhibition on technology, sustainability, green education and financial literacy.

In her address, Education Minister Yang Berhormat Datin Seri Setia Dr Hajah Romaizah binti Haji Mohd Salleh said 4,281 teachers had received AI literacy certification through professional development on ethical use. Another 772, including 22 from the Department of Islamic Studies, attended a workshop on guidance for AI in schools.

The Minister said the Brunei Examinations Board was preparing to handle examinations and certification in Bahasa Melayu, Malay Literature and Islamic Religious Knowledge at upper secondary and pre-university levels from 2028. She also cited digital literacy standards, a School Innovation Award and updated procedures for private institutions.

She said four ministries had begun developing a national early childhood care and education framework from birth to age five, covering education, health, nutrition, family protection and Melayu Islam Beraja values.

The framework involves Education, Religious Affairs, Culture, Youth and Sports, and Health. NICEe involves Home Affairs in place of Religious Affairs. How the two initiatives will work together remains to be explained.

For teachers, the immediate test is whether better relief cover eases the working day. For families, it is whether the promised centre turns early help into a service they can actually reach.

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.

KopiTalk with MHO — End of Series

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.

KopiTalk with MHO

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.

KopiTalk with MHO

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.

KopiTalk with MHO

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.

KopiTalk with MHO  ·  kopitalkmho.blogspot.com

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.