Soppoa: ‘High hopes’ for state govt to resolve foreign workers shortage

Felix Moh

KUCHING (May 3): The Sarawak Oil Palm Plantation Owners’ Association (Soppoa) is now putting high hopes on the state government to resolve the foreign workers shortage by strengthening three approaches.

Its chief executive officer Dr Felix Moh said these are to negotiate directly with their Indonesian counterpart to resume sending its citizens to Sarawak’s market; expedite the consideration of approving other source countries for foreign workers for the plantation sector; and to immediately cut red tape and improve processing time for foreign worker recruitment.

“No sign of inbound foreign workers yet. Last two months have been dramatic for businesses,” he pointed out in a statement yesterday.

He said the federal government promised two policies, namely the much-anticipated lifting of restrictions to allow international travel to resume after two years of total lockdown and the harsh raise of the minimum wage to RM1,500 without considering the views from majority stakeholders, would enable the business industry to resume foreign worker recruitment at the same time the higher pay would encourage more locals to take up jobs in various sectors.

However, none of the above mentioned seemed to give immediate realisation, he lamented.

He added there were many signs the Indonesian government would continue restricting its citizens seeking employment in Malaysia and stressed there was also no further progress since Malaysia and Bangladesh signed an agreement to reopen the job market several months ago.

“Like all sectors, Soppoa remains unclear of their prospects in terms of availability of foreign workers. On a positive note, the MPIC and MOHR have greed to fast-track the application to bring in the 32,000 foreign workers for Semanjung Malaysia that was approved last year,” he said, referring to the Ministry of Plantation Industries and Commodities and the Ministry of Human Resources.

However, he regretted to note that the Sarawak palm oil industry was once again not part of the equation.

“To recap, the Sarawak palm oil industry is seriously short of 45,000 foreign workers last year and this figure has increased by now,” Moh said, pointing out that in the last few months, Soppoa had actively engaged with the relevant state departments and many of the issues raised had received overwhelming support.

from Borneo Post Online https://bit.ly/3OSVRLN
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