03/10/2011 (Borneo Post) - The woes affecting oil palm smallholders appear unending with a smallholder from Tatau expressing his grievances about the current policies practised by the government and the Malaysia Palm Oil Board (MPOB).

Wong Hieng Ping, who claimed to represent dozens of other oil palm smallholders from Tatau, said the MPOB and the government should seek to quickly solve the issues affecting their bread and butter.

“Every day, we have to queue up in front of the Sarawak Plantation Agriculture Authority (SPAD) office in Mukah to sell our fresh fruit bunches (FFB). This is not only time consuming but the quality of the FFB also deteriorates by the time the mill accepts our products,” he said at a PKR conference held here yesterday afternoon.

Wong also requested the government and the MPOB to build more mills that he believed was the only solution to their woes.

Currently, Wong said there were only 52 mills in the state and it was far from enough to cater to the needs of the oil palm smallholders who were presently harvesting from some 900,000 hectares of land in Sarawak.

‘The government should step in to help the oil palm stallholders to ensure that we suffer minimum losses. This will also be translated into increased revenue for the country as the export of crude palm oil will be much higher,” he said.

Because of the long queue, Wong said large numbers of FFB had been rejected due to the lapse of three days.

He estimated that over 100 tonnes of oil palm were destroyed each day due to the unnecessary queue.

“This is indeed a huge loss not only to the oil palm smallholders but also to the coffer of the country,” he added.

Based on the current Crude Palm Oil price of about RM3,000 per ton, grade A FFB could fetch at price of RM630 per ton. A loss of 100 tonnes would mean a loss of RM63,000, according to Wong.

PKR Lanang division chairman George Chen said the problem was longstanding and he hoped the government would take immediate action to stop it.

“The problem is not only confined to the Mukah or Tatau. It is now a statewide problem that requires an urgent resolution.”