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.