Several firms are supplying dishes, which can give access to up to 50 television channels, for as little as $300 to $700, industry officials said. Satellite dishes can be seen everywhere, from the stilt houses in Kampong Air (water village) to new condominiums sprouting up in the capital. Even the grandiose, 90-acre Jerudong amusement park outside the capital has no admission charge.īut the oil is running dry, and as it does, the monarchy is opening up Brunei and its cocooned population to the world.Īs a birthday present to the nation in 1995, Sultan Hasanal Bolkiah decreed an "open skies" policy, allowing almost unfettered access to satellite television broadcasts. Medical care and most of their schooling is free. Many enjoy interest-free loans for houses, cars and consumer items. The rain-forest kingdom on the South China Sea is sometimes called "the Shellfare state" because the oil, Brunei's main asset, is managed by a 50-50 partnership between the government and the Royal Dutch Shell group.īruneians pay no taxes. They grew up at a time when high oil prices gave Brunei one of the highest standards of living in the developing world. More than 60 percent of the country's 296,000 people are under the age of 30. That there is any unemployment at all is odd in Brunei, where half the labor force is foreign, working in the oil fields, driving taxis, staffing clinics, doing menial jobs. 28 sermon, a message also heard in other mosques around the capital of Bandar Seri Begawan."This worrying trend is partly due to the lazy attitude of some of our youths. "The unemployment trend in the country is worrying," one said in a Feb. Some young people in Brunei are lazy and too choosy about jobs, Muslim clerics have declared in recent Friday sermons around the tiny oil sultanate.
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