26/07/2011 (The Star) - Oil palm plantation companies in the state are losing their trained foreign labour to their counterparts in Indonesia.

Apparently, these foreign labourers treated the state as a training ground where they are taught the necessary skills, then return and work in the plantations back home once their contract expires.

Already facing the conundrum of labour shortage, Sarawak Plantation Bhd group managing director Datuk Hamden Ahmad said this had further caused the plantations here to lose out in terms of investments on training and productivity.

“Those who come here are very new, so for us at Sarawak Plantation, we trained them internally but when their contract ends, they return to work in the estates there (Indonesia). So indirectly yes, we are losing out,” he told a press conference here yesterday.

According to Hamden, the oil palm planta-tion industry in Indonesia was booming and the country now led the field as palm oil producers.

He said Malaysia used to be the world leader three years back.

He revealed that Malaysia now produced about 17 million tonnes of oil palm fresh fruits a year while Indonesia produced around 25 million tonnes.

As such, he said the giant companies there required all the hired help they could get and it was only natural that the Indonesians would prefer to work on home ground. Asked if the companies in Indonesia were paying their workers more, Hamden said it was possible.

He said top grade companies there also employed Malaysian professionals for the higher posts like mill managers and general managers.

He said Sarawak Plantation would send its human resource team to select, recruit directly from Indonesia and train them.

And this had became a continuous process given the current situation, he said.

“We teach them how to recognise the fruit bunches which have ripen, ways to harvest and how to handle the machines.

“A well-trained labourer can harvest 1.5 tonnes to 2 tonnes a day. But if you are new, you can hardly harvest one tonne,” he said.

Hamden said estates throughout the state were roughly facing a 15% to 20% labour shortage.

He said the state had no choice but to look for hired help across the border because the locals did not fancy working in estates despite given priority.

He also said it was not easy dealing with the locals since they tend to “disappear” from the estates to plant padi when the planting season began.

“So how do you rely on workers like them? We are running a business here. We can’t allow this to happen,” he said.

Sarawak Plantation Bhd has close to 1,000 foreign labourers at its plantations.