Wooing Malaysians to join oil palm sector

Minister moots ‘specialised harvesters’ term to draw youths to be estate workers amid labour shortage

KUALA LUMPUR: The Plantation and Commodities Ministry is proposing calling plantation workers ‘specialised harvesters’ in a bid to convince local youths to join the country’s oil palm estates.

Minister Datuk Seri Johari Abdul Ghani proposed this in his ministerial winding-up speech in Parliament yesterday, saying Malaysia’s oil palm sector is currently short of around 40,000 harvesters due to reliance on foreign labour.

“The lack of harvesters is something very serious where the national economy will suffer a loss of RM8 billion according to current prices,” he said.

According to him, foreign labour accounted for 75 per cent of the total compared to Indonesia where the industry was worked almost entirely by local manpower.

The issue, he added, was made worse during the Covid-19 pandemic when many foreign workers returned to their countries and did not come back to Malaysia.

Johari said his ministry is trying to a ract Malaysians, especially youths, to view the job of a harvester as unique, as it requires expertise.

“We cannot call them plantation workers. We call them specialised harvesters. So the ministry has started a course to moderate, or a course to become these specialised harvesters.

“We have identified 60 participants whom we will enrol under the Technical and Vocational Education and Training, and then dispatch them to plantations to teach them how to harvest.

“However, we want to limit their work to only three, that is to

The lack of harvesters is something very serious where the national economy will suffer a loss of RM8 billion according to current prices. Datuk Seri Johari Abdul Ghani

assess ripe fruits, cut the folds, and harvest the fruits. The balance of four (jobs), we want to ask foreign workers to do,” he said.

He also said industry players and smallholders need to increase the production of fresh fruit bunches (FFB) and crude palm oil (CPO) to maintain the relevance of the country’s palm industry.

“The government will not open new plantation areas but will instead focus on efforts to increase yields. If we can achieve an FFB yield of 18 tonnes per hectare, the industry can produce 20.5 million metric tonnes of CPO – an increase from 18.5 million metric tonnes last year,” he said.