“I would like to bake my cookies on a larger
scale”
Every
year for the past 20 years, Musinah Jamal has been baking and selling her
cookies during the Ramadan season. She
would rent a space in a mall for festive shoppers to buy a range of her
homemade cookies. After the
implementation of the Goods and Services Tax (GST) this year, she noticed a
slower pace in shopping for cookies but remains confident that business will
pick up by the third week of Ramadan.
Musinah,
better known as Kak Ina, started baking at the tender age of twelve. Looking back, she recalls with a laugh, her
first foray into baking, not just one type but a variety of ten types of
cookies. She forgot to add baking powder
to her recipes and they turned out rock hard and quite inedible!
She
certainly learnt to bake the hard way. But
since then Kak Ina has got her recipes right and come up with a range of delicious
cookies to sell during the festive season.
Kak Ina,
a single mother for the last 22 years, has the added advantage of speaking
fluent English. Besides baking for her
business, she held various jobs from office work, selling insurance to
distributing library books, to earn a steady income to bring up her three
children.
She has
the far-sightedness to conduct a survey of the light industrial areas around
Kulaijaya and is challenged to start her own business in producing baked
cookies not only for the local market but also for export. With a good rapport with her neighbours and
fellow villagers, she has devised a plan to work in cooperation with them to
bake cookies in a large scale production.
Armed with her command of the English language
and a healthy dose of tenacity, Kak Ina is also confident that she will achieve
her aim in exporting her baked goods.
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