Former actor now working as bank clerk

Compiled by C. ARUNO, JUSTIN ZACK and R. ARAVINTHAN

WITH no acting opportunities, Raja Muhammad Afiq Raja Razali now earns a living as a bank clerk, Harian Metro reported.

“At first, I was stressed out that I had no long-term offers.

“But (now) I refuse to use that as an excuse to not do anything,” he said.

He added that he started his new job in early 2023.

“If I say that I’m famous, I feel that time has long passed,” Raja Afiq said.

He added that he has commitments and a family to look after.

Despite his current job, Raja Afiq said he would consider acting again should the opportunity arise.

> Settlers in Felda Lasah in Sungai Siput are crying foul over a lack of maintenance of oil palm plantations in their area, Sinar Harian reported.

They said the plantations have been ignored, leading to an overgrowth of bushes.

“I myself have entered such plantations and it ‘hurts my eyes’ to see how unkept they were.

“Settlers are grateful to Felda for running the plantations, but with such conditions, how much profit can we get?” said second-generation Felda settler Mohd Zul Kulup, 58.

“If this is the case, then I wonder how long the settlers’ debts will be settled,” he added.

Former Block Q Rancangan Felda Lasah chief Syed Osman, 52, said disappointed settlers, including himself, have left Felda over the issue.

He said they opted to manage the plantations on their own.

“It’s not that we wanted to leave Felda, but we have no choice due to the low returns compared with running it on our own,” he said.

> While it was a happy day for many new students at Universiti Pertahanan Nasional Malaysia (UPNM), it was bittersweet for a 19-year-old after having just lost his mother a week ago, Utusan Malaysia reported.

Hao Yang, who enrolled at UPNM on Tuesday, said his mother died from lung cancer on Sept 28.

He had been staying with his mother following his parents’ separation four years ago, even after he embraced Islam in 2019.

“My late mother’s colleagues accompanied me to the university.

“I’ll take my mother’s advice and work hard to become a contributing member of society in the future,” he said, adding that he hopes to be a fighter jet pilot for the air force.

The above articles are compiled from the vernacular newspapers (Bahasa Malaysia, Chinese and Tamil dailies). As such, stories are grouped according to the respective language/medium. Where a paragraph begins with a >, it denotes a separate news item.