Fatimah (centre) looks at the young mushrooms grown in plastic bottles. From left are Welfare Department director Abang Shamsuddin Abang Seruji and Lianna.
KOTA SAMARAHAN: Mushroom House – a community project by Samarahan Community Rehabilitation Centre (PDK) – was officially opened at the centre by Minister of Welfare, Women and Community Wellbeing Datuk Fatimah Abdullah yesterday.
The project is sponsored by Universiti Malaysia Sarawak (Unimas) through its Community Transformation Centre (UCTC) for the community of the centre which includes the trainees and participants.
It is part of the university’s involvement with the local community to boost their socio-economic wellbeing.
In her speech, Fatimah praised UCTC, Unimas Faculty of Sciences and Technology Resources and all the centre’s working committees for their initiative in ensuring that the project is implemented creatively and innovatively.
“I believe that the project will focus on uplifting the social economic status of individual participants and the community in the centre,” she said.
A representative of the centre, Lianna Laha, said the idea for the Mushroom House was born when the head of the UCTC, Professor Dr Sepiah Muid, presented the centre with mushroom seedlings.
She said they started building the house in 2016 and completed it at the end of the year.
Lianna believes that by taking part in the project, participants will get the idea of how to do mushroom farming to uplift their socio-economic wellbeing.
PDK Samarahan has 74 trainees and five are people with disabilities who are looked after by nine helpers and a supervisor.
It was revealed that the expenditure for managing this centre from Jan to June this year will be RM136,152 and last year from Jan to Dec the expenditure was RM273,404.
Dean Of Unimas Faculty of Sciences and Technology Resources Dr Othman Bojo and Welfare Department director Abang Shamsuddin Abang Seruji were present.