SANDAKAN – A young 25-year-old local, Mohamad Kadir Abd Jalil put on his sports shoes, ready for a tough hike to Kampung Sundang Bukit, Batu Sapi, here last week.
He has been going to villages – including squatter settlements in the district – since last month, to identify families in need.
As the chairman of a non-government organisation (NGO) here, Pertubuhan Kebajikan Marhaen Sandakan (K-Marhaens), Mohamad Kadir led ten other volunteers, and would knock from door-to-door to gather data of families in villages here.
He said the purpose, other than to identify families that need food assistance in order to help them, is to ensure that other NGOs and public members do not fall for the lies of greedy scammers.
“There are cases in which a family would take advantage of kindhearted people who are willing to help during the pandemic, and started asking donation from different NGOs and individuals, and gather as much supply as they can.
“Some have lied about their living condition, and some have gathered enough food assistance to have their kitchen looking like a grocery store. This is not fair to other families who are genuinely in need of assistance,” he told The Vibes.
Mohamad Kadir said while they go from one village to the next, not knowing the health conditions of the villagers, they do worry for their safety from Covid-19.
“We practice strict standard operating procedure (SOP) to keep ourselves safe. As for physical safety (from threats), the villagers have been kind to us. In fact, at times they would fear us because they thought that we were enforcement personnel who came to take them away,” he said.
Mohamad Kadir said that the toughest part of their work was to reach faraway houses that would require them to hike a hill, and walk on risky bridges with worn-out wood, that they would end up feeling exhausted when they returned home.
“Yet, we still have to do it. With the data, not only that we could identify the poor families and help them, but we would also have a data for reference to avoid scam,” he said, adding that his team is now working on the fifth village here, and have gathered data on over 3,000 families to date.
He advised members of the public to check with Sandakan’s NGOs involved in food distribution, if they wished to donate to a stranger who had approached them on social media.
Mohamad Kadir’s effort was exactly to avoid an incident that was shared by another NGO – Abam Botak team’s leader, Yunizam Yusop.
Yunizam and his team have been managing burial of Covid-19 victims in Sandakan.
On his Facebook, Yunizam shared the incident of a desperate Sandakan father who had robbed a woman of her necklace to get money to treat his sick three-year-old daughter.
The father was arrested two days later and was sentenced to imprisonment. While he was detained, his daughter sadly passed away.
Yunizam said the case is an example of every man’s fear after they get married; fear that they are not able to provide for their wife and children.
He later told The Vibes that he heard the incident from family members of the deceased, who he helped to transport to a burial site.
“Our team is focused on burial management for the time being, but I hope that other NGOs and kind individuals in Sandakan to continue helping people who are desperately in need, to avoid such incident from happening,” he added. – The Vibes, July 19, 2021
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