Photo shows an abandoned unharvested field due to the labour shortage.
KUCHING (June 7): The Sarawak Oil Palm Plantation Owners Association (Soppoa) is urgently calling on the state government to proactively help the industry solve its critical labour shortage.
According to Soppoa chief executive officer Dr Felix Moh Mee Ho, Sarawak oil palm companies have relied too much on the federal government in solving the issue.
“It is unfortunate that our urgency is always regarded as secondary and does not get much attention from them. For example, as far as Soppoa knows, none of Sarawak’s plantation companies were included in the approved 32,000 quota (approved by Putrajaya).
“The bottom-line is that the industry cannot afford to have any further delays of incoming foreign workers, which has adversely impacted oil palm productivity. The ripen fruits on the palm trees must be harvested immediately, failing which translates to additional loss of revenue when the unharvested fruits rot. Having the largest planted hectarage with oil palm, Sarawak should stand up and take the lead for the betterment of the industry,” he stressed in a statement today.
He claimed between 20 and 30 per cent of oil palm plantation areas in the state cannot be harvested due to a lack of harvesters, with many smallholders having abandoned their estates totally since they are unable to recruit workers.
Moh said almost all plantations, regardless of size, in the state are operating at half of optimal capacity.
“This is because about 80 per cent of their workforce are Indonesians.
“Opening of borders has encouraged many Indonesians who were stranded at their workplaces due to the Movement Control Order (MCO) in the past two years to return to their home countries. Without the replenishment of new recruits, the plantation companies are experiencing a critical low in workforce,” he said.
Moh said the labour shortage cost Sarawak plantation companies RM2 billion in revenue last year.
“At the same period, the state too lost hundreds of millions of in income derived from sales tax of palm oil products. This amount should be good for building several mega bridges in the state or possibly enough to connect all the rural villages with small bridges.
“Continuous labour problem is detrimental to the industry. Palm oil plays an important role in terms of the state’s economy. It has provided incomes and uplifted living standards, especially to the rural parts of Sarawak,” he said.
Moh called for more foreign workers to fill the void immediately as the “dream to encourage locals to participate in agriculture by raising minimum wages won’t hold water”.
He noted that the much-anticipated opening of borders for international travellers failed to bring foreign workers.
“There are lists of source countries that Malaysia can recruit workers from. By right the recruitment process should improve over time and be more efficient. Unfortunately, it isn’t the case. Many recruitment applications still got stuck here and there in the process.
“The federal government’s promise to sort things out and bring in the first batch of foreign workers after Hari Raya was again questionable as another festival Gawai has passed. It has been almost a year since the first announcement but the local industry has not witnessed a single arrival of foreign workers,” he pointed out.
According to him, such inefficiency costs additional billion-ringgit revenue losses to the industry, which has already suffered since theCovid-19 pandemic.
“Last October, the Minister for Plantation Industries and Commodities (MPIC) announced a special approval to bring in 32,000 foreign workers, including Indonesia, to ease the labour shortage in the plantation sector.
“This followed by the signing of memorandum of understanding (MoU) on the recruitment of Bangladeshi workers, effective for five years until December 2026 by the Malaysian Human Resources Minister and Bangladesh’s Expatriates’ Welfare and Overseas Employment Minister on Dec 19, 2021.
“However, neither of these two efforts has materialised,” he lamented.
Loose fruits are left behind as there aren’t enough workers.
Moh said since the beginning of the MCO, Soppoa has worked tirelessly to ensure all plantation operations continued under strict standard operating procedures (SOPs).
He said Soppoa has also participated in formulating the SOP to recruit and manage foreign workers during MCO with the Ministry of Modernisation of Agriculture and Regional Development Sarawak.
In the past few months, he said Soppoa has had numerous engagements with the state authorities on red tape by improving foreign recruitment.
“Soppoa managed to brief the Deputy Minister for Labour, Immigration and Project Monitoring Sarawak on various predicaments encountered by the industry, who also expressed high hopes to mitigate them at the soonest.
“According to Dato Gerawat Gala, foreign worker is strictly a federal government matter. Sarawak does not have the autonomy to deal with source countries directly on foreign workers without the federal government’s prior approval through MoUs with foreign governments concerned,” he said.
Moh said such restrictions should no longer be a stumbling block for Sarawak to recruit foreign workers, since the federal government has already signed MoUs with Indonesia and Bangladesh.
“Unfortunately, there are still many delays in recruitment caused by unknown reasons that are not readily available to the business industry due to lack of transparency of the dealings.
“Federal ministers involved in foreign recruitment have the tendency of changing goal posts whenever they cannot meet the promised dates. And highly likely that this will persist for a longer period,” he said.