Fruitful effort for traders

Basic ingredients: Traders selling a variety of onions and garlic under the PST in Dengkil. — Bernama

PUTRAJAYA: A total of 42 fresh markets under the Federal Agricultural Marketing Authority (Fama) have recorded RM18.9mil in sales in the past 10 days.

Agriculture and Food Industries Minister Datuk Seri Dr Ronald Kiandee said the 42 controlled fresh markets (PSTs) provided platforms to 348 farmers and 6,879 entrepreneurs to market their products during MCO 3.0, and offered options to consumers to get essential items with savings of between 5% and 20%.

The sales figure was from May 25 to June 4, he said in a statement yesterday.

He said each PST had eight basic commodities, namely vegetables, fruits, fish, chicken, beef, and small- and medium-sized industry (SME) products, grocery items and take-out food.

He visited two PSTs – MyFarm Outlet in Putrajaya and Fama operations centre in Dengkil – to monitor the continuity of the food supply chain through the markets, which offer basic goods to residents during the first phase of the total lockdown from June 1-14.

Ronald said a total of 76,869 permission letters had been issued by the ministry for the informal agriculture sector up to yesterday, including supply chain activities and marketing related to food necessity, to farmers, breeders, fishermen, B40 small traders and micro agro-based operators.

For the formal agriculture sector, involving factories, product or food industry manufacturers, they needed to get permission to operate through Covid-19 Intelligent Management System (CIMS) 3.0 under the International Trade and Industry Ministry (Miti), he said.

Ronald said Fama had set up an operation room, from 8am to 7pm, to ensure agricultural product marketing activities run smoothly during the total lockdown.

For farmers who face any problem of marketing their products, they can go to the Fama portal feedback system at http://ffs.fama.gov.my/aduan/ or contact the Fama hotline at 019-747 6754/013-377 7100/010-763 2684.

Meanwhile, farmer Zainal Marlan, 42, said the PSTs had helped him to continue with his business since MCO 1.0 in March last year.

“The PST ensures that farmers continue to sell (their products) and helps in reducing loss because of crop damage due to MCO, ” he said.

For dragon fruit seller, Leo Chen Lun, 38, the PST concept not only provides business opportunities to farmers and SME traders but also provide a safe and convenient method for consumers to shop.

“The place is open and spacious and there is also a drive-thru service for customers who buy online.

“There are fewer customers, but I’m collaborating with a friend to sell dragon fruits via home delivery, ” he said. — Bernama