FELDA was created as a government program intended to give the rural poor a fresh start in their life. The program worked really well in its early years, providing settlers land to farm and live on while creating communities in new frontiers.

Mismanagement and lack of forward-looking planning lead to the decline of FELDA settlements, previous Barisan government failures in ensuring FELDA settlements are equipped with proper infrastructure has resulted in broken communities within the settlements. Without decent infrastructure such as paved roads, well-equipped schools, and commercial centres, it has proven hard for the settlers to diversify their communities beyond agriculture. This situation has restricted career opportunities for the second generation of FELDA settlers, causing a majority of them to move out of their communities into bigger cities in search of better employment. Read the rest of this entry »