WELCOME: Naroden greets participants accompanied by (from left) Wan Uzir and Mohd Naim.
KUCHING: The hawker and small business sector is much needed by people in urban and rural areas to help reduce the cost of living through reasonable pricing of food and other products.
Assistant Minister in the Chief Minister’s Office (Bumiputera Entrepreneur Development), Datuk Mohd Naroden Majais said this at the opening of the state-level Hawkers and Small Business Empowerment course 2013.
Naroden said people in urban and rural areas depend on the services they provide.
“And hawking and small business are among the main economic activities of the people in the country, including Sarawak.”
The one-day course at Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka was attended by over 800 participants.
Regular courses conducted for hawkers and small business operators provide them with new ideas and inputs.
Among those present were Companies Commission of Malaysia chief executive officer Mohd Naim Daruwish and Ministry of Domestic Trade, Cooperatives and Consumerism state director Wan Ahmad Uzir Wan Sulaiman.
Based on statistics from district offices across the state and Inland Revenue Board (IRB), 147,000 small business and hawkers have been registered.
Naroden said the government acknowledged the importance of the sector, and had provided them with group insurance scheme – 1Malaysia National Hawkers and Small Business Insurance Plan.
The scheme was introduced in January this year and to-date some 15,306 Sarawakians were covered, while 318 micro loan scheme applications worth a total RM2.27 million from the state have been approved.
He urged hawkers and small businesses to register to be eligible for the 24-hour insurance coverage.
Naroden, who is also Assistant Minister of Resource Planning, said the government had identified the wholesale and retail sector that can contribute RM165 billion towards the Gross National Income (GNI) by 2020, and provide 370,000 jobs in the next 10 years.