Industry source: State was not represented when the plan was being drawn up

06/10/2010 (The Star Online), Kuching - The eight core entry-point projects (EPPs) and four business opportunities planned to help the oil palm industry achieve an incremental gross national income under the Economic Transformation Programme (ETP) lacks input from Sarawak.

An industry source said although Sarawak was considered the last frontier for oil palm development in Malaysia, there was no representation from the Sarawak Oil Palm Plantation Owners Association (SOPPOA) or leading Sarawak plantation companies on the economic “lab” formed to map out the strategies, plans and initiatives which resulted in the EPPs to transform the industry.

The oil palm industry is one of the 12 national key economic areas (NKEAs) identified under the ETP.

“Without the inputs from Sarawak, the strategies and initiatives drawn up did not take into consideration the state’s peculiar conditions,” the source told StarBiz yesterday.

Citing infrastructure as an example, he said the road system in Sarawak was not on par with that of the peninsular, and this had resulted in additional transportation costs for fresh fruit bunches (FFBs) from the plantations to the processing mills.

“Poor road conditions, like the stretch from Sibu to Mukah in central Sarawak, have not only hampered the speed of transportation of the FFBs to the mills but also resulted in higher maintenance costs for the trucks,” he added. The acute shortage of plantation workers in Sarawak needs to be addressed, while the Government’s plan to impose a higher levy on foreign workers will worsen the situation, according to the source.

“The industry has asked the authorities to relax the recruitment policy on foreign labour. Instead of helping, they are making things more difficult for us,” he claimed.

Sarawak Land Development Minister Datuk Dr James Masing said recently that plantation companies had complained that due to the worker shortage, between 10% and 15% of FFBs were not being harvested and left to rot.

Sarawak could lose up to RM1bil a year in uncollected FFBs. Sarawak’s oil palm industry employs about 10,000 workers, of which 70% are foreigners.

A plantation owner said a plan to mechanise plantations using equipment to harvest FFBs in order to cut down on the number of workers would take time as their usage required ground preparations. He noted that many plantation companies had tried to mechanise part of their estate operations but had not made much headway.

On the plan, under the EPP, to make it mandatory for the replanting of matured trees where yields have fallen, he said this was not practical as reduced yield could be due to insufficient application of fertilisers and poor field maintenance.

Meanwhile, a palm oil mill operator said the target to improve the oil extraction rate from 20.5% to 23% by 2020 was achieveable, adding that some mills in Sarawak had already attained the 23% rate.