Once insulted, Awang is now popular
KUALA TERENGGANU: Since watching a video showing a disabled youth being mocked and insulted, YouTuber Muhamad Sukri Sulaiman is determined to make the special person famous and respected by the community.
Muhamad Sukri, 27, said after watching the video around 2018, he continued to track Muhammad Hafizuan Muhammad Adam, 28, better known as Awang.
The purpose is to make the young man with learning disabilities a celebrity through his appearance in a video produced by his production company, Sukri Sulaiman Production.
“When I saw a video on Instagram mocking Awang (Muhammad Hafizuan) with words that were not pleasant to hear, it made me feel very angry and since then, my dream is nothing but to want people to respect Awang,” he told Bernama here.
Muhamad Sukri said that he had to wait for a year to get Awang since at that time he was still tied to another production company.
“After a year and the production company was no longer able to manage Awang because there were no video shoots and product advertising offers, I finally managed to bring Awang with me at the end of 2019. From then on, our journey of producing videos together began,” he said.
He said, apart from product advertising and reviews of food and services, most of the videos featuring Awang are related to current and societal issues such as football and family life.
Among the works that received extraordinary response was a series of videos titled ‘Durian Mustaqim’ produced in July last year which displayed the current reality about durian, including the high price, which became a phenomenon at the time on social media platforms such as YouTube, Facebook, Tik Tok and Instagram.
More proudly, on 11 August 2021 his channel was awarded the ‘Youtube Silver Play Button’ after reaching 100,000 subscribers.
According to Muhamad Sukri, despite being born as a disabled person (OKU) slow, Awang is not difficult to manage, in fact it is easy to listen to words and understand the instructions given.
He said, the young man’s spontaneous, honest and funny attitude has managed to capture the hearts of fans, whether from inside or outside Terengganu.
“He never spoke rudely to anyone. Now go anywhere there will be someone who greets Awang and wants to take a selfie with him and Awang will take good care of his fans’ requests,” said Muhamad Sukri.
He is also grateful that Awang’s life has improved now that he has his own income and contributions from the Employees’ Savings Fund (KWSP), in addition to signing a two-year contract as an ambassador for a well-known gold business company.
“Before this, Awang was the same as a child. He would walk and play alone. Awang was also very obsessed with the swing and would spend his time playing on the swing in the playground near his home in Kampung Seberang Pintasan in Dungun,” he said, adding that his mother Awang who manages the youth’s finances.
The dream of making Awang famous and respected has now been achieved, but he cannot run away from the accusations of a few people who claim that he is using the special person.
Despite feeling a bit aggrieved, Muhamad Sukri ignored the matter because he was confident that all his efforts were to defend Awang’s fate and wanted the young man to be independent.
“Before Awang’s presence, I already had 300,000 followers on Facebook, I have also been a Youtuber for a long time. So the assumption of some people is unfounded,” he said.
source – BERNAMA
