ESL Blogs

This blog is a bit different from what you may expect from a blog dedicating to father. This is blog not only about my father, but also about the late Tun Razak Hussein, the second Prime Minister of Malaysia. Why I chose both of them for my Writing Challenge, I hope I will answer that by the end of my blog.

Tun Razak Hussein was born in March 1922 to a wealthy family. When he was the Deputy Prime Minister of Malaysia, he realised that the distribution of wealth among the people was not balanced. Most Malaysians especially the Malay were living under the poverty line. Most of them were illiterate and did not own even a piece of land or just smallholders farms. Most farmlands or estates belonging to the foreigners especially the British. 

His dream was that there would be “land for the landless” and “jobs for the jobless”. Thus, he implemented a new scheme under FELDA or Federal Land Development Authority. The main objective of the scheme at that time was to resettle poor smallholders farm owners or poor rural people to a new establishment which was especially developed for these people. They called these people "settlers".

My father was one of those settlers. We were living in a small house in a village before all these. My father didn't own the rubber plantation of which he was working, nor did he owned the house. Then he applied to be the settler. He and my Mom left us, they were five of us at that time, with our maternal grandparents and moved to a new settlement. It was because the new settlement has no school yet at time. 

After about two years, they had to be transferred to another settlement because in the current settlement, most of the rubber trees were destroyed by wild elephants. So you can imagine how wild the area was.

When my parents moved to the new settlement, it was already a productive settlement. There was a school, clinic, and the high school was not too far away. They decided to bring all of us to the new settlement. My father was given a house with about half an acre surrounding it and about 10 acres of rubber plantation. He has to work on the plantation and sell the product directly to the organisation and where a certain portion of the revenue will be deducted to pay-off for the house and plantation.

Life was hard at that time, but my father worked hard on his plantation. At least now he owns the house and plantation. After about thirteen years of hard work, finally he paid-off all his debts to the government and owned the land, fair and square.

There were many more people like my father, who came from all over the country looking for better future especially for their kids. Nowadays, Felda is known to be the biggest estate in the world. It owns and develops various areas all over the country and giving the chance for the people to work and own their own plantations. Most children from Felda also became successful in their studies, though it became a bit unfortunate when they moved to the cities and did not work on the plantations.

Even though some people don't like most politicians, but I think I became what I am today, and many more children from Felda, because of one visionary politician. He was like a father who wanted his children to succeed in this world by giving them the platform to do so. He gave them a direction as well as the means to succeed. He did not give them freely, but he made sure all his children worked hard to achieve it.

But at the same time, vision of a person will never be successfully achieved if not being executed properly. My father knew that the only way to change his fortune was to accept the challenge. So this blog dedicated to two wonderful fathers; Tun Razak Hussein and my father. May Allah bless them and accept their kindness.