Felda Selancar 3 - winner of 2018 Keceriaan Kampung Felda Award

ROMPIN, July 7 (Bernama) -- Over 20 settlers representing Felda Selancar 3 here, shed tears of joy when their village was named champion of the 2018 Anugerah Keceriaan Kampung Felda (AKKF) today.

The event was all the more meaningful as they received the award from Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad at the 2019 Felda Settlers’ Day celebration held in their home ground, witnessed by thousands of settlers.

According to the group’s manager Raduan Rozali, 50, for the win the team earned RM1 million in cash, a certificate and trophy, adding that the villagers have agreed that each of the 365 families and seven employers of the settlement would receive RM1,000.

“The remaining prize money will be used to build a homestay named AKKF (the name of the award) and invested as capital for a cattle breeding project to be run by villagers of the second generation.

“We want to help the Felda Selancar 3 settlers to earn some side income with the construction of the homestay, as currently, the settlers are only working on their oil palm and cattle farms,”  he told Bernama here.

The competition, which has been the yearly highlight for the settlers, assessed the Felda villages in 10 key areas, including their homes, quality of the community, main roads, farm management, economic projects, activities of the settlers and the new generation as well as layout and beautification of tourism-related businesses in areas.

Raduan said they spent about RM70,000 to beautify the village, including building a recreational park for the purpose of the competition.

“We progressed in stages since 2016 by focusing on cleanliness before going into beautification of the village areas.

“When the residents started to appreciate our efforts and became enthusiastic in beautifying the village, we entered the AKKF competition for the first time in 2017, but that time luck was not on our favour,” he said.

Meanwhile head of the womenfolks, Hendon Arshad, 59, regarded the victory as a success for the state as it is understood that this is the first time a settlement in Pahang has won the prestigious award.

Hendon added that the village organised a major gotong-royong every month while each area had their own cleanliness and beautification activity on a bi-weekly basis.

“Meanwhile for each block, we made it compulsory for the block members to participate in the weekly gotong-royong. This helped unite the residents.

“The positive feedback we received from our children and visitors encouraged us to put more effort in beautifying the village,” she added.

-- BERNAMA