The Sumgilbar Cooperative Society has been established to tap into the various downstream processing initiatives proposed in the province, one of them is in agriculture and livestock management.
Former district administrator for Madang Province, Jimmy Sekum is the man behind the establishment of the Sumgilbar Cooperative Society.
The government recently banned importing of chicken into Papua New Guinea, hoping to create a lucrative industry for farmers nationwide. Many provinces, have since then, taken the initiative to embark in poultry, with some locally packaged chicken assortments already in the shops throughout the country.
Coincidently, on May 19th, the Governor Ramsey Pariwa, launched the partnership between the Department of Agriculture and Livestock and the Provincial Government bridging the gap for downstream processing to occur within the province.
This also saw the move to upgrade the Sagalau Abattoir to cater for poultry and other meat to be processed and made available on the shelves.
Mr Sekum, who now retired, has been actively involved in community activities within his electorate. Seeking another alternative to his family coffee business, he along with other community members registered the Mugil Poultry Farmer Cooperative, solely to meet the demand of chicken through the Sagalau abattoir.
However, into the third meeting of the group, more interest was shown from many other farmers outside of the Mugil area, and so they expanded their Cooperative group name to capture the whole district, in Sumgilbar Poultry Farmer Cooperative Society.
The group, still in infancy stages, have determined vision of raising poultry, especially chicken to supply the Sagalau abattoir.
It is K250.00 to join the Sumgilbar Poultry Farmer Cooperative, however, K50 is mandatory whilst the K200.00 can be paid in installments.
Apart from registration fees, there is also another K70.00 fee that would cover for training, and as broken down by Mr Sekum, K20 would be for poultry management and K50 would be for financial literacy training.