KINABATANGAN: Agriculture and Food Security Minister Datuk Seri Mohamad Sabu has warned that government-funded agricultural projects will be closely monitored, saying he would personally conduct surprise inspections to ensure public money delivers tangible results on the ground.
The government was determined to move away from policies that looked impressive on paper but failed during implementation, he said.
“We do not want policies to be formulated on paper alone. We want to go down to the ground and see for ourselves whether what has been announced is actually working,” he said at the Sentuhan Agro Madani programme here yesterday.
Mohamad said he would return to Kinabatangan in about a year, without prior notice, to assess the progress of projects announced under the programme.
One of the projects Mohamad was referring to is the newly launched high-impact closed-house broiler chicken farming project, which the Kota Kinabatangan Farmers’ Organisation proposed.
The RM2.4mil project, to be implemented in Bukit Garam, is designed to house 30,000 chickens per production cycle, with up to four cycles annually. It is expected to generate an estimated gross annual revenue of RM2.75mil.
He said modern closed-house systems addressed issues such as odour, waste management and efficiency, adding that technological advancements now allowed poultry waste to be processed more effectively.
“This project must be managed properly. We do not want to see something that works for one or two cycles and then collapses,” he said, adding that the estimated return on investment of about 27% could be achieved if operations were managed well.
