KUCHING: Sarawak Oil Palm Plantation Owners Association (Soppoa) has expressed concern on the recent development in Sabah, where plantations in six districts were shut down due to detection of Covid-19 cases in a few mills and estates for some time now.
On the other hand, the whole plantation fraternity in Malaysia is currently operating within the movement control order (MCO) guidelines and authorities’ directives, and in many ways contributing to the country’s economy and stability.
“We concur with the views expressed by MPOA (Malaysian Palm Oil Association) and MEOA (Malaysian Estate Owners Association) that enhanced MCO or shutdown should be implemented for isolated cases of mills or estates affected by the coronavirus while those unaffected ones be allowed to continue operating.
“This is to stabilise the workforce who are self-locked down in their respective operations and to prevent a mass exodus of hundreds of thousands of foreign workers prospecting jobs elsewhere leaving a big vacuum in manpower in the current workplace if there is a shutdown in operation even when the operations resume again,” Soppoa said in a statement yesterday.
Soppoa said there was also an element whereby the coronavirus infection was unintentionally propagated either as carriers or recipients where there was intermingling and contacts between the workers during the movements outside the plantation domain.
According to Soppoa, crop losses in these non-virus-affected operations would run into millions of ringgit as the crop deteriorated while the shutdown continued and would need another few weeks to clean up the discarded fresh fruit bunches when operation resumed again.
“This will cause a significant revenue loss to the planters and farmers who need finance to pay their employees and pay off their loans as well as the state government’s loss in the form of CPO (Crude Palm Oil) sale tax.”
Soppoa shared the same view with the industry on the full commitment to strictly implement the MCO guidelines and MPOB standard operating procedures for all estates and mills, which are already in place right from the beginning.
