Increase intake of locals, Labuan Methanol urged

Labuan: Parti Keadilan Rakyat (PKR) here called on Petronas Methanol Labuan (PML) to increase the intake of locals in its operations so that locals would not feel marginalised and disgusted that they were unable to enjoy better benefit from the oil and gas activities in their hometown.PKR chief here Simsudin Sidek said:

"We have complaints regarding this matter and hope the local Member of Parliament will seriously look into it and make it his responsibility to ensure that job priority in the oil and gas sector is given to locals and also other economic opportunities arising from the sector."

He said even though the oil and gas sector here appeared strong, "Labuan doesn't even have a single local company deeply involved as developer, vendor, etc, unlike Sarawak."

Simsudin said Labuan should follow the Sarawak system where the State government had a "local quota" to ensure that local works and players do get a good part in the industry.

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Turning back to PML, Simsudin said:

"We have been told that the two methanol plants here have a joint workforce of about 400 but only 10 per cent of the employees are locals. When recently vacancies occurred due to higher plant utilisation or other reasons, the new recruits were from the Petronas Training Institute."

Citing an example, Simsudin said recently PML recruited 26 employees, 20 for operations and six for the maintenance division, and "local applicants had no chance".

"Agreeing that the locals may not have required standards for the available jobs, this could be solved by placing some applicants with potential and good educational background under apprenticeship and later absorbed into a proper scale. Such was the practice before when there was no training institutes," said Simsudin.

He said it was difficult for locals to obtain the paper qualifications needed by PML and other companies because it was difficult for locals to gain entry either into the Petronas Training Institute in Terengganu or in Sabah.

He said both institutes placed priority in accepting state applicants.

"So we are in a dilemma," Simsudin said.

There was some hope of solving the Labuan problem when the Universiti Malaysia Sabah Labuan International Campus announced it would look into the setting up of a petroleum faculty at the campus.

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But about two years had lapsed and there was not a scratch of progress in the proposal, said Simsudin.

The Petronas Methanol Plant, under Petronas Chemical Group, was first established here in 1984. Several years later, a second plant said to be costing RM1.5 billion was built, making Labuan the largest world producer of methanol with a production level at about 5,000 metric tonnes per day.

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