Soppoa members cautious road ahead challenging
KUCHING: Sarawak Oil Palm Plantation Owners Association (Soppoa) is cautious that the road ahead is still challenging and therefore have to gear up, strengthen and support members in this demanding business environment.
It said to serve members more effectively and efficiently for the 2021-2023 term, it would focus on three key functions that are aligned to its mission and objectives, namely service, development and advancement.
Service is defined as timely attention to issues raised by members, and whenever possible should follow the problems through to its resolution. Soppoa has thus lobbied hard to the government to provide mass Covid-19 vaccination to all plantation workers, ensuring continuous operation, and tackling issues related to workers’ permit during the pandemic.
“Due to the increasing cost of production, Soppoa has also resubmitted an appeal for a review of threshold price for levying the crude palm oil sales tax to the state government during a courtesy call to the Premier of Sarawak in Feb 22,” said a statement from their chairman Eric Kiu Kwong Seng yesterday.
Development for Soppoa on the other hand is to work with members closely to identify the necessary skills and resources to support members’ career goals and the organisation’s business needs.
Soppoa has thus organised and is in the process of organising various virtual education programmes (webinar) for knowledge sharing and information updating on current issues of interest covering definition of forced labor, discussion on why millennial not joining plantation, 2022 business tax, and introduction to environment, social and government for palm oil industry.
“Soppoa, in collaboration with local learning institutes, also organised industrial training and advanced learning programmes that offer upskilling and reskilling courses to members,” said Kiu.
As for advancement, Soppoa is ready to think outside the box by exploring ideas that are beyond the nature of current business.
Soppoa, in collaboration with local research institutes and universities, has embarked on several research and development projects on conservation and biodiversity in oil palm plantation.
Kiu also said there was also a need for Soppoa to embrace digital economy by emphasising the utilisation of technological know-how in the operation of oil palm plantations to increase efficiency, productivity and boost sustainability credential.
Meanwhile, Soppoa’s 14th annual general meeting (AGM) was held on Mar 28, which was chaired by Kiu, who was elected to the post in June 2021 for a twoyear term (2021 to 2023).
In his opening remarks, Kiu said the oil palm operation was seriously affected by Covid-19 pandemic for the past two years.
“The plantation sector faced serious shortage of labour to harvest palm fruits and reported loss of nearly 30 per cent in crop production last year as a result.
“The lower productivity turned out to be a blessing in disguise for Malaysian palm oil industry in a way as it pushed the crude palm oil price skyrocketing since the last quarter of last year.
“With such an opportunity, the majority of plantation companies were able to cushion their losses due to disruption of production,” he said.
Soppoa has 87 ordinary members and 18 associate members covering about 75 per cent of total area planted with oil palm in Sarawak.