Longhouse residents harvest second batch of fish

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DIFFERENT SIZES: Residents select bigger fish to sell.

KANOWIT: Rumah Sali Kirak residents harvested their year-old fish reared in two community ponds in Nanga Ngungun resettlement scheme during the recent Gawai Dayak.

Seven families from the longhouse are participating in the fish project headed by Banji China.

Banji said they sold their first batch of fish netted on May 28.

“We targeted to sell the fish during this time as there will be a lot of people returning home for Gawai, which means good business for us.

“We netted RM1,500 from the first catch of 100kg,” he said when met recently.

The fish were of species that included lampam jawa, black tilapia and sultan selling at RM12 per kg for the bigger fish while RM8 per kg for the smaller fish.

Longhouse dwellers prefer lampam jawa and sultan to black tilapia though they like red tilapia.

He said the second batch of fish netted on May 30 earned another RM650.

The profit distributed among the participants would be used as capital to buy fish feed and new batch of fish fry.

The community fish pond project in Nanga Ngungun was set up in the 1990s to provide an economic source for residents of longhouses in the former Rajang Area Security Command (Rascom) resettlement scheme.

There are 24 longhouses in the scheme with two ponds allotted to every longhouse while three ponds to longer longhouses.

Some ponds were left idle due to residents migrating to urban areas in search of a better life.