Soppoa: S’wak palm oil industry needs other source countries for workers
16.04.2022 (www.theborneopost.com) - KUCHING (April 16): Sarawak Oil Palm Plantation Owners Association (Soppoa) is urging the government to allow the hiring of workers from other countries aside from Indonesia.
Its chief executive officer Dr Felix Moh Mee Ho said the lack of foreign workers cost the industry RM2 billion in revenue for Sarawak last year.
He said palm oil is a very productive crop, producing more oil per land area than other equivalent vegetable oil crops.
Moh added with less than 10 per cent of land devoted to produce all vegetable oil crops, palm oil supplies about 32 per cent of the world’s vegetable oil demand in 2021, according to the Malaysia Palm Oil Board.
Of this, Malaysia accounted for 24 per cent of the world’s palm oil production in the same year, he said.
“The government only allows source of foreign workers for Sarawak oil palm plantations from Indonesia. West Malaysia has a number of countries to source workers for oil palm plantations.
“Maybe it is timely for Sarawak to relax its foreign worker recruitment policy to allow more source countries for oil palm plantations, for instance from Bangladesh,” Moh said in a statement.
He added that the oil palm plantation is labor intensive, and 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, 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.
He pointed out as the pandemic shut borders, it basically also halted the new recruitment for foreign workers in the last two years.
“A temporary freeze on hiring these workers by the federal government, with good intention to maintain public health, has exacerbated the shortage. Official statistics showed that there were 1.1 million foreign workers in Malaysia in 2021 down from about 2 million a year before,” he said.
He added the last couple of months saw the Human Resource Minister working tirelessly to finalise a Memorandum of Understanding on the recruitment of foreign workers with Indonesia and Bangladesh.
“Even though there is nothing concrete realised with Indonesia, the minister was quoted as saying that about 500,000 workers from Bangladesh are expected to arrive in stages starting this month,” he said.
According to the minister’s earlier statement, the recruitment of these workers are opened to all sectors allowed, namely plantation, agriculture, manufacturing, services, mining and quarrying, construction and domestic service.