Malaysia is unable to take advantage of the rising prices of crude palm oil due to an acute labour shortage, lament Felda settlers.

It has been an ongoing problem since movement control orders were enforced due to the pandemic some two years ago, said Felda Ulu Tebrau village chief Ab Jalil Sahlan, adding that many foreign workers had packed their bags and left for home.

 “We don’t have enough manpower now as there are only a handful of foreign labourers working at palm oil plantations, which is an issue for settlers besides the rising cost of fertilisers,” he said.

“Settlers are complaining that the lack of workers has affected the quality of the oil palm fruits because they can’t harvest them in time, which may cause them to rot.”

According to Ab Jalil, an oil palm plantation worker receives a monthly wage of between RM1,800 and RM2,000. And despite the monthly salary, locals don’t like working under the sun and have opted to work at factories instead, he added.

“There are talks that Felda is looking to bring workers from Bangladesh to replace Indonesian labourers but many settlers are quite hesitant, as they foresee many issues, including communication issues,” he said.

Felda Malaysia Youth Council president Mohd Fadzli Hasan admitted that the issue had become a problem but said that it is being proactively addressed with new measures to lessen dependency on foreign labourers.

The council has introduced a programme to interest youths in plantation jobs such as harvesting, which has attracted about 3,000 third-generation Felda settlers nationwide.

 “Besides that, we are using machines to make it easier for settlers to harvest and drones to spray pesticides, which are faster than conventional means,” he said, adding that there are currently 22 Felda youth trained to pilot drones.

According to Mohd Fadzli, the council is also looking at setting up an academy to instruct Felda youngsters on taking care of palm oil trees.

“They will have to start from the bottom and work their way up, they will have to be a labourer first before becoming a plantation manager,” he said.

He said this is not a stopgap measure for addressing labour shortages, but a long-term solution to reduce dependency on foreign workers.

The countries supplying workers are also making higher demands, said Mohd Fadzli, especially in terms of salary.

“And if we get workers from Nepal or Bangladesh, we will need more time to train them, compared to Indonesian labourers who already have a basic knowledge of working in plantations,” he added.

In Perak, a 2,000ha oil palm plantation owner who wished to be known as Lim, said he only has 20% of the workforce needed for full operation.

“Three years ago, when I had about 200 workers, the harvesting cycle was about 12.5 days.

“During the initial MCO, I managed to persuade many of the workers to stay on, but not for the second year. Now, without the arrival of new workers in the past two years, I have only 32 workers remaining, many of them elderly,” he said.

“The harvest cycle will soon extend to 38 days if the situation does not improve.

“I’m supposed to harvest 33 tonnes per hectare per annum, but last year we only managed 18 tonnes,” Lim added.

He said his plantation is “not coping well” due to the labour shortage, which has affected everything from harvesting to maintenance work.

“Back then, pathways between trees were cleared with enough workers carrying out their respective tasks.

“Now, we have to sacrifice weeding work to enable the workforce to focus on harvesting and production tasks. This has resulted in the plantation getting overgrown with bushes causing workers to be unable to collect oil palm fruits which drop.

“The uncollected fruits start to rot and the seeds eventually grow into young trees around the mature ones, and we end up spending more time removing them.

“We have to incur all these added costs and the losses due to low harvest are a double whammy for plantation owners like me,” said Lim.He hopes that the labour shortage will be ironed out by the government before they incur more losses.

Source:
courtesy of THE STAR

by THE STAR

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