KUCHING: The Sarawak Oil Palm Plantation Owners Association (SOPPOA) is committed to providing continuous training opportunities to its members.
SOPPOA chief executive officer Dr Felix Moh said one of the approaches was to partner with local training providers, including learning centres and institutes, to provide a wide range of courses related to oil palm management for different levels of jobs.
He said these courses, however, had to be carefully tailored for real-time needs for the industry.
“We are confident that having a continuous training and upskilling programmes will benefit its members and employees in the long run.
“Education and training are just a fraction of services SOPPOA provides to its members. As such, oil palm plantation companies are urged to partner SOPPOA to collectively develop and improve the industry,” he said in a statement yesterday (Feb 25).
Moh said Good Agricultural Practices (GAP) was one of the aspects that the association supported and adopted when it came to the management of oil palm plantation businesses.
According to the Food and Agriculture (FAO) of the United Nations (UN), GAP was a set of principles for on-farm production and postproduction processes resulting in safe and health food and non-food agricultural products while considering economic, social, and environmental sustainability.
“By simply putting in a layman’s term, GAP is a framework that farm producers need to follow conscientiously to ensure healthy and excellent quality products.
“There are many studies that showed enhancing work knowledge is the fundamental to achieving GAP. For example, a formal education opens the mind of the workers to knowledge, non-formal education gives them hands-on training and better methods of managing whereas informal education keeps them abreast with changing innovations and ideas that allow workers to share the experience gained,” he explained.
Moh said there were three job categories in an oil palm plantation, namely field workers, staff, and executive, pointing out that within each job category there were different job activities that required different skillsets.
“For example, a harvester is a master in cutting oil palm fruit whereas a field maintenance worker who is experienced in weed spraying is not suitable for harvesting. In other words, it is not easy and practical to swap job scopes once a worker has developed skill in a particular work activity in the oil palm plantation.
“This contradicts with the perception by the general public that oil palm plantation does not need specialised or skilled workers,” he said.
He said that because there were many areas of specialisation, providing training programmes to employees had always been challenging for oil palm plantations.
“On top of that, hectic employee schedules, geographically dispersed workforce, different learning habits, lack of engagement and limited training budget often hinders the good outcome of training,” he said.
