KUCHING: The Sarawak Oil Palm Plantation Owners Association (SOPPOA) has called on the state government to relax its foreign worker recruitment policy.
In making the call, its chief executive officer (CEO) of the Sarawak Oil Palm Plantation Owners Association (SOPPOA) Dr Felix Moh Mee Ho said
Sarawak’s palm oil industry needed foreign labour urgently.
Moh said as the COVID-19 pandemic had not only shut borders but also halted the new recruitment for foreign workers in the last two years.
“Perhaps it is timely for Sarawak to relax its foreign worker recruitment policy to allow more countries including Bangladesh to act as sources of for oil palm plantation workers.
“Currently, the only allowed source of foreign workers for Sarawak oil palm plantation is Indonesia while West Malaysia has a number of countries which provides workers for its oil palm plantations.
“There are many indications that Indonesians are not coming to seek employment in Malaysia anytime soon due to the restrictions imposed by their government.
“Prolonged delay of Indonesia workers is detrimental to Sarawak oil palm plantation,” he said in a statement today.
Moh added saying putting all one’s eggs in one basket might not be wise anymore, especially when the source of workers was a country which competed directly with Malaysia in terms of palm oil market shares.
He said that official statistics showed that there were 1.1 mil foreign workers in Malaysia in 2021, down from about 2 mil a year before.
The last couple of months, he pointed out, had witnessed the Human Resource (HR) ministry working tirelessly to finalise the memorandum of understanding on recruitment of foreign workers with Indonesia and Bangladesh, he said.
“Even though nothing concrete has been realised with Indonesia, HR Minister Datuk Seri M. Saravanan has been quoted saying that about 500,000 workers from Bangladesh are expected to arrive in stages starting this month.
“According to his earlier statement, the recruitment of these workers is open to all sectors allowed, namely, plantation, agriculture, manufacturing, services, mining and quarrying, construction and domestic service,” he said.
He stated that Sarawak was the biggest state with oil palm planted areas starting this year. The industry lost about RM2 billion in revenue last year as a result of insuffiicient number of foreign workers for harvesting.
He further said that palm oil was a very productive crop, producing more oil per land area than other equivalent vegetable oil crops.
With less than 10 per cent of land devoted to producing all vegetable oil crops, he said palm oil supplied about 32 per cent of the world’s vegetable oil demand in 2021 according to Malaysia Palm Oil Board.
Of this, Malaysia accounted for 24% of world’s palm oil production in the same year, he added.
“Oil palm plantations are labour intensive.
“Since locals are not interested in plantation works, Malaysian palm oil industry relies heavily on foreign workers to carry out a range of tasks including nursing new oil palm seedlings and maintaining existing oil palm trees to harvesting of palm fruits.
“Foreign workers make up to 80 per cent of total workforce in the oil palm plantation.
“The temporary freeze on hiring these workers by Putrajaya, with the good intention of maintaining public health, has definitely exacerbated the shortage,” said Moh.
He stressed that Malaysia oil palm plantation still needed foreign workers for many years as suitable automated equipment for harvesting was not likely to be available in a short period of time.
