23/04/2015 (Bernama) - The state government is committed to develop 380,000 hectares of land with high yielding rubber and 85,000 hectares with oil palm statewide by 2023, the state legislative assembly sitting here was told today.

Deputy Chief Minister Tan Sri Alfred Jabu said these initiatives were expected to benefit 95,000 rubber smallholders and 22,000 oil palm smallholders.

He was replying to Alexander Vincent (BN-Ngemah) who wanted to know if the government had any concrete plans in helping settlers at the three former Rejang Security Command (Rascom) Resettlement Schemes in Nanga Jagau, Nanga Tada and Nanga Ngungun to plant commercial crops.

He said the initiatives would also benefit all the schemes settlers.

"We are working closely with the federal government and stressing the need for Sarawak to be allocated with sufficient development funds in the next 10 years to help them," he said,

Jabu, who is also the state Minister for Modernisation of Agriculture, said RM380,000. was spent for the farmers assistance programmes between 2011-2014 for the three Rascom Resettlement Schemes.

"These programmes have assisted 183 pepper smallholders with an area of 21 hectares," he said.

Meanwhile replying to a question from Fong Pau Teck (Independent-Pujut), Jabu said there were a total of 2,837 Bangladeshi and 115,569 Indonesian workers in the state.

These figures were those recorded by the Immigration Department, and as such were legal workers, he said.

He said the majority of the Indonesian workers totalling 52,024 worked in the plantation industries while 31,245 worked in the manufacturing sector.

Of the Bangladeshi workers, he said 1,731 worked as factories workers.