The Malaysian Insight

MALAYSIA stands to lose around RM90 billion in plantation exports if the government freezes the intake of foreign workers immediately, said the Malaysian Agricultural Producers’ Association (MAPA) today.

Its director Mohamad Audong said a manpower freeze will affect all plantation players, including those operated by government-linked companies (GLC).

“If there are no foreign workers, the plantation sector will be neglected. It can cause losses of RM90 billion or more in terms of exports.

“Larger players and those run by GLCs would be closed down, smaller operators will be devastated,” he told Malaysia Decides.

Mohamad was responding to new Human Resources Minister M. Kulasegaran, who said the Pakatan Harapan government would review a deal by the previous Barisan Nasional administration to bring in 1.5 million workers from Bangladesh.

Mohamad said the plantation sector is still suffering from a manpower shortage as 80% to 90% of its workers were from Bangladesh and Indonesia.

“The new minister must understand that Malaysians don’t want to work in this sector. A freeze on foreign labour recruitment will be detrimental to the crops.”

Malaysian Employers Federation executive director Shamsuddin Bardan, however, disagreed, saying that the 1.78 million foreign workers registered in the country were enough.

A bigger problem, he said, is resolving the status of illegal foreign workers before taking in more foreign labour.

MEF said employers should invest more in technology and skilled workers to increase productivity, but Mohamad of MAPA said this was not realistic for the plantation and agricultural commodities sector, which still needed manpower to harvest fruit bunches and to tap rubber. – May 27, 2018.