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Kuala Lumpur: Harvesting of fresh fruit bunches (FFB) in the oil palm industry is still impacted by the slow entry of foreign labour which has not fully recovered despite the reopening of Malaysia’s borders on April 1, 2022.

Plantation Industries and Commodities secretary-general Datuk Ravi Muthayah said the situation should not have continued, as in fact, the government realised that the continuous dependency on foreign labour could affect the oil palm plantation sector specifically in the long run.

“So long as we don’t introduce technology that can reduce labour requirements, then we cannot run away from hiring foreign workers in this sector.

“Foreign labour actually helps in driving the economy and don’t consider them as taking over the jobs from local residents, even though the local workers are less interested in working in the plantation sector,” he said during a Briefing and Dialogue Session on Labour Usage in the Palm Plantation Sector 2022 here, Thursday.

The session was organised in conjunction with the Malaysia International Agricommodity Expo and Summit (Miaces) 2022, held on July 26-28, at the Malaysia International Trade and Exhibition Centre.

Ravi said the government is always encouraging industry players including smallholders to increase the use of mechanisation in estates to enable them to raise productivity and income for the oil palm industry.

He said considerable efforts have been undertaken to encourage the use of mechanisation in the plantation sector which are expected to reduce dependency on foreign workers.

“The ministry has launched the Mechanisation and Automation Research Consortium of Oil Palm (Marcop) platform in November 2021. The establishment of this consortium is expected to increase research activities in the latest mechanisation and automation in the plantation sector,” he added.

The country’s palm sector suffered close to RM10 billion in losses during the January to May 2022 period when some 75.2 million FFB were not harvested or collected due to the shortage of foreign workers.

For the first five months of this year, the oil plam plantation sector saw a shortage of foreign labour of about 54,000 workers out of whom 53 per cent was for harvesting and collecting FFB.