An elderly businessman - after spending 40 years of his life turning several former mining areas in Perak into lucrative duck farms and commercial fish ponds - is now facing the possibility of losing everything he has struggled for most of his life.

NONE Self-confessed workaholic Leong Yeow Tuck, 65 ( left ), has claimed that his duck farm is the second biggest in the Silver State. Perak is the top state in the country for rearing ducks with its abandoned tin mines running hundreds of such ventures.

He claimed that his company named Viatak Enterprise Company Sdn Bhd was the state's pioneer in exporting between 2,000 to 200,000 of the birds to Singapore in the 1990s.

Now, the company has reached the level of exporting processed duck feathers to China, Taiwan and Vietnam for making pillows, blankets and clothes while weekly, five tonnes of fish are supplied to Singapore and Indonesia.

After all this, on April 8 came the shocker -the senior citizen was hit with letter from Gopeng Berhad claiming ownership of the Kota Baru mining area and giving him 15 days notice to vacate the land.

His son, Yew Siang, 30, immediately wrote to the six-member partnership asking for an explanation but there was no reply.

Leong was traumatised as he had taken a business loan of RM2.5 million from Bank Pertanian and Malayan Banking to build a slaughtering, processing and storage factory equipped with the latest machinery at IGP International Industrial Park in Chemor near Ipoh.

When growing big could prove fruitless

According to Yew Siang ( below ), his father started his initial projects in Buntong (Ipoh) in the 1970s, later expanding to five other mining areas in Batu Gajah, Gopeng, Kanthan, Malim Nawar and Kota Baru which account for 50 % of the total business.

NONE Since 2000, the father has been paying RM8,000 in annual rent to the six-member partnership company which claims to have the mining rights for the Kota Baru  area.

The last rental for 2009 was settled in December last year and meanwhile Yeow Tuck has developed not only the farm and fish ponds but also planted 30 acres with oil palm trees.

The father is appealing to the state government to take back the Kota Baru mining area which was developed by Viatak from Gopeng Berhad and return the land to his company.

Yew Siang, a mechanical engineer by profession, is also facing an eviction notice for another of his factories set up with an investment of half-a-million ringgit to manufacture duck feed. located in Kanthan in Chemor.

According to him, the Kinta Land and District Office refused to renew that factory's temporary occupation Licence (TOL) from 2001 onwards without giving any valid reason.

He added that he is now the manager of his father's businesses, whose company Viatak Enterprise had applied for various abandoned mining areas to expand the basic businesses but there had been no response.

With the lack of response from the authorities, Yew Siang then turned to Parti Sosialis Malaysia (PSM) for help and a memorandum was sent to Menteri Besar Zambry Abdul Kadir with copies to Perak State Secretary Abdul Rahman Hasim and Chinese affairs advisor to the menteri besar Chang Ko Youn on May 11.

NONE PSM national deputy chairperson M Saraswathy ( left ) said: "The federal government wants to promote and encourage more agricultural activities in the country but on the contrary the state government is discouraging Perakians from engaging in such activities.

"The farmer had shed blood, sweat and tears to develop abandoned mining areas into prosperous farming areas and out of the blue comes Gopeng Berhad to lay claim to them ," she said.

"The state government must return the land to Viatak if it wants to encourage more agricultural activities in the state," she added.

Both Perak state secretary Abdul Rahman Hashim and Chinese affairs special officer Chang Ko Youn were unavailable for comment.