KOPITALK LEGCO TRACKER | 22nd Legislative Council Session
Day Seven of LegCo: The Budget Speaks in Billions.
But the People in It Are Speaking in Ones.
KopiTalk with MHO • Wednesday, 18 March 2026 • 22nd LegCo, Day Seven
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His grandfather worked for Shell. His father worked for Shell. He grew up thinking he would work for Shell too. On Wednesday, a member of the Legislative Council asked the question this family has been quietly dreading: is there still a future in oil and gas for the next generation in Belait? KopiTalk LegCo Tracker — Day Seven. |
His grandfather worked for Shell. His father worked for Shell. He grew up in Kuala Belait or Seria — the way many families there do — with oil and gas not just as a job, but as a way of life. A community identity. A sense of where you belong and what you are for. And now he is looking at his own future, and the question that nobody has answered plainly enough is sitting in front of him: is there still a place for me in this industry? Or should I be looking somewhere else entirely?
On Wednesday, Pehin Orang Kaya Indera Pahlawan Dato Seri Setia Awang Haji Suyoi bin Haji Osman put that question into the chamber directly. He said what many people in those communities feel but rarely hear acknowledged in official settings: there are families in Belait where grandfather, father, and son all worked for the same company — and the son now does not know where his future lies. He asked, simply and without drama, whether young people in the oil belt should now be advised to look for work elsewhere.
That is not a budget question. That is a question about identity, about community, about what happens to a town when the thing that built it begins to wind down. And it deserves more than a policy answer.
Day Seven of the 22nd Legislative Council session — Wednesday, 18 March 2026 — was different from every previous day of this session. There was no open debate. Instead, the chamber moved into the Committee Stage: a more technical process where members examine specific budget lines, ask pointed questions about individual projects, and ministers answer within tight time limits. It is less ceremonial than the policy debate. And sometimes, precisely because of that, it is more revealing.
What Day Seven revealed was not a new problem. It was the human face of problems this session has been circling all week — the economic anxiety that lives in specific communities, the governance failures that land on specific families, and the mental health crisis that is quietly building underneath everything else. The budget speaks in billions. But the people inside it are speaking in ones.
What Was Raised
Three issues stood out on Day Seven as genuine public-interest stories — not as policy abstractions, but as real situations that real people are living right now.
The oil and gas family — and what comes next for Belait.
The energy sector discussion on Day Seven was largely technical — project updates, electricity grid improvements, climate change targets. But it had one moment that cut through all of that. When Pehin Suyoi raised the future of oil and gas employment in Belait and Seria, he was not asking about barrels per day or downstream value chains. He was asking about families. About communities built around a single industry that is now contracting. About a generation of young people in those towns who grew up expecting the same career path their fathers had — and who are now being told, gently, that the world has changed.
The minister's answer was honest about the challenges. Oil and gas production faces ageing assets and cost pressures. New exploration is being pursued. Downstream industries are being developed to create new kinds of jobs. All of that is real. But none of it answers the question that young man in Belait is actually asking. When will those new jobs arrive? Will they be in his town? Will they pay what the industry paid his father? The answer to those questions was not in the chamber on Wednesday.
Civil servants suspended for years — and the families paying for it.
Pengiran Haji Isa bin Pengiran Haji Aliuddin brought something to Day Seven that was unusual in its specificity and its courage. He cited actual cases — drawn from correspondence with law firms — of government officers who have been suspended from work, placed on half pay, and left in legal limbo for years while investigations and court processes slowly inch forward.
One health officer was suspended in 2020 — nearly six years ago — for bringing candy containing cannabis into the country. He has been on half pay ever since, with no resolution. A male officer was suspended for two years after his girlfriend filed a complaint against him. Three senior officers in another department have been suspended for several years in an ongoing investigation. An education officer was suspended immediately after his wife made a domestic dispute police report — before any charge was filed in court.
These are not statistics. Each of these is a person. Each of them has a family managing on half a salary — sometimes for years — while waiting for a system that cannot seem to reach a conclusion. The rules that govern suspension were written in 1998 and have not been meaningfully updated since. The minister acknowledged this directly and confirmed that a review is coming. But a review is not the same as a resolution. And the families living on half pay cannot wait for a review to run its course.
Each suspension is a person. Each person has a family managing on half a salary — sometimes for years — while waiting for a system that cannot seem to reach a conclusion.
Mental health — the quiet crisis that connects everything else.
The mental health discussion on Day Seven was, in many ways, the most important of the entire session. Not because anything new was revealed — the numbers have been building for years. But because, for the first time in this session, the chamber connected mental health directly to the economic and social pressures that the rest of the debate has been describing all week.
Awang Abdul Aziz bin Haji Hamdan said it plainly: more than 13,000 individuals were receiving mental health treatment in 2023 and 2024. That is a 17 percent increase in a single year. Anxiety cases have been rising steadily. The group most affected is young adults in their early twenties — the same group facing job insecurity, financial pressure, and the weight of expectations the economy is not yet meeting.
Think about that for a moment. This session has spent seven days discussing youth unemployment at 18.3 percent, skills mismatches, graduates who cannot find work that matches what they studied, young people who cannot afford to start families, and workers without proper contracts. And now the mental health data tells us what all of that looks like when it lands on a person. It looks like a 17 percent increase in people needing help. It looks like anxiety cases rising year after year. It looks like the generation that was supposed to build Wawasan 2035 quietly struggling under the weight of a future that has not arrived yet.
The chamber also heard that 75 percent of deaths in Brunei are caused by non-communicable diseases — conditions like diabetes, heart disease, and cancer that are heavily influenced by lifestyle, stress, and whether people seek help early enough. Some patients are not being diagnosed until stage four — the final stage of illness — because they did not know the warning signs, or did not think their symptoms were serious enough to act on. Early screening is improving. But the social conditions that drive people toward poor health — stress, financial anxiety, overwork, hopelessness — are not a medical problem. They are a governance problem. And the budget alone will not fix them.
What the Answers Revealed
Day Seven's answers were, in the most honest sense, mixed. Some were genuinely encouraging. Others revealed just how long some of these problems have been waiting.
On electricity in Temburong — a community that has been dealing with power cuts for years — the minister gave a detailed and specific answer. The main power station in Temburong has been running for over 40 years. 72 percent of outages are caused by old, worn-out cables. The long-term fix — a transmission line connecting Temburong directly to the national grid — is 92 percent complete and expected to be ready by the middle of this year. That is a real answer with a real timeline. It will mean something to every family in Temburong that has been managing around power cuts for longer than they should have had to.
On mental health and the doctor shortage, the Health Minister was refreshingly candid. Doctors are leaving because other countries and the private sector pay more. They are leaving because the government system does not yet offer flexible working hours — and some doctors, particularly parents of young children, need that flexibility. The minister said this plainly, without defensiveness. That kind of honesty is worth acknowledging. But the people waiting months for a specialist appointment need more than an honest explanation of why the queue is long. They need the queue to get shorter.
On the civil servant suspensions, the minister confirmed that the 1998 rules governing when and how officers can be suspended will be reviewed. He also acknowledged that the Public Service Commission is reviewing the relevant sections of its own Act. These are genuine steps. But the officer who has been on half pay since 2020 — six years of his working life — does not benefit from a review that has not yet happened. His family has been living with the consequences of institutional slowness all this time. The review, when it comes, will help the next person. It will not give him those years back.
On civil service performance, a member noted that only 21 percent of government agencies have reached three stars or above in the public service grading system — and not a single agency has yet reached five stars. The minister acknowledged this and said more targeted support for lower-performing agencies is being planned. It is the right response. But 79 percent of agencies below three stars — after years of effort and significant investment in training — is a signal that something more fundamental than additional workshops is needed.
The review will help the next person. It will not give him those six years back.
What the Public Is Really Asking
- For the families in Belait and Seria: The government says new industries are coming. When will they arrive in our town? Will they pay what oil and gas paid? And until they do — what is the plan for the community that oil built?
- For the civil servant on half pay: The rules that put me here were written in 1998. A review has been promised. How long will it take? And while it is happening, who is responsible for my family's situation right now?
- For the young adult seeking mental health support: The session has spent a week talking about jobs, costs, and the future. But nobody has said clearly what the government will do for the generation that is carrying the anxiety of all that uncertainty. Is mental health a national priority — or is it still something people are expected to manage quietly on their own?
- For the patient waiting to see a specialist: Doctors are leaving because there is no flexible working arrangement for them. The minister said so himself. So when will flexible working hours be introduced for healthcare professionals? This is not a complex question. It is a policy decision that could be made this year.
- For every Bruneian watching the Committee Stage: The members asked good questions. The ministers gave honest answers — some of them unusually candid about real problems. But when the session ends tomorrow, who will be responsible for following up? Who checks, six months from now, whether the 1998 circular was actually reviewed? Whether the oil belt town got its answer? Whether the mental health numbers went up or down?
The Signal of the Day
Day Seven was the day this session finally spoke in specifics.
For six days, the chamber debated the national budget in broad strokes — sectors, percentages, deficits, and blueprints. All of that is necessary. But it can also create a kind of distance between the discussion and the people it is supposed to be about.
On Wednesday, that distance closed — briefly, imperfectly, but genuinely. A member stood up and asked about a specific family in Belait — three generations of oil workers, and a son who does not know what comes next. Another member cited specific cases of specific government officers, by department and by year of suspension, and asked why the system had left them there. A third connected the mental health numbers directly to the economic pressures the chamber had been discussing all week and asked what is actually being done for the young people carrying that weight.
This is what a legislative council is for. Not just to pass budgets, but to make sure the people behind the budget numbers are visible — and to insist that the system sees them too.
The signal from Day Seven is this: the session has been building toward a question that DMAO, writing in response to this series, has already named directly — who is still responsible after the answer is given? Because the answers on Wednesday were, in many cases, genuinely good. The Temburong electricity fix is coming. The suspension rules will be reviewed. The mental health plan is being extended. The oil sector is being revitalised.
But good answers in a chamber are not the same as changed lives outside it. The son in Belait is still looking at his future. The civil servant is still on half pay. The young adult is still sitting in that clinic. The question is not whether the answers were good enough. The question is whether anyone will still be responsible for them when this session is over.
Seven days. One session. One budget. BND6.3 billion.
And somewhere in Belait, a young man is still working out what his future looks like without oil. Somewhere in Brunei, a government officer is still waiting for a decision that has been coming since 2020. Somewhere, a young adult in their early twenties is sitting in a waiting room, trying to get help for the anxiety that builds when the economy keeps promising a future that keeps not quite arriving.
They were all in the room on Wednesday. They were in the questions, in the numbers, in the cases that members put on record. They were, for a few hours, visible.
The real measure of this session is not what was said. It is what changes for them when the chamber goes quiet.
KopiTalk LegCo Tracker covers the 22nd Legislative Council session from a public-first perspective.
What was said, what mattered, and what the public is still waiting for.
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