Published on: Tuesday, February 09, 2010 |
Kota Kinabalu: The oil palm sector must consider hiring and training more locals in view of the increasing difficulty in getting foreign plantation workers, who are now mainly Indonesians.
Plantation Industries and Commodities Minister Tan Sri Bernard Dompok said this is because Indonesia had stated it would be doubling its land acreage for oil palm.
When this materialises, the Indonesian oil palm industry would certainly need a lot of workers to sustain its industry.
Statistically, the Malaysian oil palm industry provided employment to 325,074 workers in 2000 and this increased to 610,135 in 2008.
Of this, 82 per cent or 500,817 were employed in the plantation sector with 75 per cent or 376,906 being foreign workers.
"This indicates that the plantation sector is really dependent on foreign workers especially as harvesters who account for 35 per cent (176,795 workers) of the total workforce in the sector."
Hence, he said the country must be prepared to train its back-up local labour and work towards increased mechanisation. "The Government is fully aware of the industry's labour shortage issues.
"Therefore, the industry has to change its mindset and shift to a new paradigm as foreign labour will be increasingly scarce and costly," he said.
He said there would come a time when foreign workers would come in trickles into Malaysia or, in another scenario, go back to their country of origin.
He reminded players in the industry to refrain from hiring illegal workers.
While Malaysia needed foreign workers in the oil palm sector, he stressed that they must come in through the proper channel.
He said plantation owners should not just focus on profits but provide also more facilities to attract workers to the industry.
This initiative is in line with the growing involvement of the plantation companies in discharging Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) activities and in tandem with the Government's efforts to improve the welfare of oil palm workers.
In the long term, this move would attract a bigger pool of local workforce and reduce dependency on foreign labour especially in the plantation sector.
"So, I strongly (would like to) urge all industry players to enhance their CSR and make available more funds to improve the infrastructure for workers in the estates," he said.
He stressed that they should also look minutely into the low wages Malaysians employees are receiving in the industry.
While plantation owners may dispute this because they are claiming to pay market wages, he said they should really strive to attract Malaysians to work in the sector.
Apart from facilities, they should consider housing, opportunities to be more productive and motivation, among others, to entice potential Malaysian workers.
On other developments, he said the Malaysian Palm Oil Board (MPOB) is promoting a mechanical cutter known as Cantas as a tool to harvest Fresh Fruit Bunch (FFB).
Using the tool, a harvester could cover an area of 50 hectares compared to 21 hectares if he uses the sickle.
"With Cantas, one can use it to harvest FFB at a height of five metres which is the growth pattern of a 13-year-old oil palm tree," he said.
If Cantas is to be used, he said the industry would need only 40,540 harvesters compared to 96,525 harvesters needed using the manual method.
Dompok said this could reduce the harvester workforce by 55,985.
