When you take a step back to just sit and observe, you’ll soon realize all these events happening around you, sometimes, at once.
I prefer not to be an ultracrepidarian to the devastating events that had been happening not only in Brunei but also outside but my heart sunk upon hearing that Brunei Times was shut down overnight. I don’t read the paper daily, but frequent enough to know the importance of its existence in our lives. During my time of unemployment, BT was the first thing I would go through in the morning. The Brunei Times offered a platform for our youths to showcase and promote their causes, and also a place where Bruneians could have their voices to be heard. Small businesses also took Brunei Times as a way to market and exposed themselves, and this had been found to be effective.
When I read the front page of the final edition, I couldn’t fully wrap my head around it. If the company was not able to sustain itself, shouldn’t that at least be made transparent amongst the employees? At least they could prepare themselves with enough resources and measure. Unemployment is definitely not to be taken too lightly. Brunei has only recently seen 599 graduates from UTB, 1477 graduates from UBD and 219 graduates from UNISSA. To top that up, an addition of about 110 of newly unemployed staff from BT. The number will keep on rising but there just aren’t enough jobs in the market for everyone.
Nobody knew for sure why Brunei Times was given the order to shut down their business, but speculations were going around endlessly. I was sad, but it was when I found out that there would be no online access to the archives, only then I thought I heard my heart cracked. 10 years worth of history disappeared into the web. Just devastating! What does that mean for us to use the articles published as a reference now? Can that still be considered as a legit resource, one that can still be accepted, when the online archives were revoked from public? Surely, the keywords of “Government”, “licence to publish” and “issues” on their last notice are something to ponder upon. I don’t know why I felt this triggered the term ‘freedom of speech’.
But gah! Thank you so much Brunei Times, and all the people behind it for creating such a good platform for us to make ourselves be heard and seen. BT has changed my perspective on local journalism, and I pray that the former staff will be able to find another place where they can continue to flourish and nourish their talents and skills.
On a different note, why does it feel like the only measure to tackle unemployment is by being an Entrepreneur? To be realistic, not everyone is bornt with entrepreneurial skills, and even though it can still be instilled and taught, not all of them have enough drive or motivation to actually pursue it as an alternative career path. I don’t have any objection on encouraging those who are passionate on Entrepreneurship as I have seen and met many young, inspiring and innovative Entrepreneurs in Brunei. I’ve tried to run my own business once too, but it’s easier said than done. It requires patience, resilience and passion to keep your business sustainable and running. I was not any of that before, so the moment I realized I was making more losses than profit, I felt there was nothing more to do other than ‘taking a break’ from it. By break, I meant 3 years. Unlike those Entrepreneurs, I still feel comfortable working under a management, where I can learn and furnish myself with skills that were never taught in my entire academic period. Perhaps not everyone will want to take the route to being their own boss, and perhaps there are still other ways we can think of to help our youths. Maybe it’s also as simple as equipping them with necessary skills to make them more marketable, not only in Brunei but also abroad.
So, Donald Trump as the next US President? What else is there to say. . . (Feelings about the Election)
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I was on google search and so I clicked on the first few results I saw - turned out it was an article written by Brunei Times. This broke my heart, knowing good information can no longer be accessible. :(
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