'Planters often hire illegals and pray for amnesty'

SABAH RCI Plantation companies in Sabah often hire undocumented migrants as workers to fill shortages as they know that the government regularly offers amnesty to illegal migrants.

Testifying at the royal commission of inquiry (RCI) into illegal migrants in Sabah, Aumkar Plantations general manager Nokiah Sanusi said this was also the practice at his company’s oil palm plantation in Kunak.

“When the amnesty programmes (were offered) all plantations have the opportunity to register all illegal workers and their dependents.

“When short of workers, we take the worker’s close kin (who enter illegally).

“Every two or three years the Sabah government has these amnesty programmes so (we hire the illegal migrants and) we pray that the amnesty comes,” he said to laughter in the Kota Kinabalu courtroom where the RCI is sitting.

To this, conducting officer Manoj Kurup ( left ) asked if his prayers have thus far been answered, Nokiah answered in the affirmative.

However, Nokiah stressed that only 60 out of the 800 foreign general workers at the company’s 7,000ha plantation were illegal and all are now documented.

The same practice was also used by IOI Corporation, as testified by its human resources officer from the Lahad Datu region, Luz Davila.

In her evidence, Luz said there were undocumented workers working for IOI before, but all have been legalised through the amnesty programme.

“Some of them previously worked for other companies, so when they jumped to our company, their work permits were void and they became undocumented, upon which we endeavoured to legalise them,” she said.

Another witness, Felda Global Ventures Holdings (FGV) Sahabat Selatan manager Roserun @ Roslan Sunman @ Samang, said FGV's payroll system does not allow undocumented workers to be registered.

However, some of 20 percent of workers under the purview of FGV's contracted vendors were illegal but have been legalised through the amnesty programme.

'Plantations paralysed without foreign workers'

Roserun @ Roslan, Luz, her colleague from IOI Corporation Sandakan region Nalia Rudin and Nokiah all agreed that they have difficulty recruiting locals as the latter are not keen on manual labour on plantations.

Nokiah, however, said that local workers were slowly replacing foreigners, following the implementation of the minimum wage.

“Ah, so you were not paying enough before,” Manoj remarked, to which Nokiah agreed.

All the same, Nokiah noted that locals are “sensitive” to admonition, are “less productive” compared to foreigners, prefer to work indoors and at places closer to the cities and find it difficult to wake up at 5am to start work at 6am.

Nalia, meanwhile, testified that local workers cannot handle hard work and often complain of a bad back to avoid the more physical work.

“I also feel that as the minimum wage is the same in all sectors, locals prefer to work in restaurants in cities where the work is less strenuous compared to the plantations,” she said.

All three agreed that the plantations will be paralysed without foreign workers which make up at least 85 percent of workers.

'Chanced upon false IC holder only once, over decades'

On a different matter, Nokiah said that of the decades that he has worked with Aumkar, he has only chanced upon a worker with a false identity card once.

The worker, who was to be hired as a driver in 1999, was found after checks to hold an identity card that belonged to someone else, who already had an Employees Provident Fund account.

“When we asked him where he got the IC, he just said, ‘It’s okay,’ and just took off,” Nokiah said.

He said he knows of no case where workers who hold work permits later get identity cards.

Meanwhile, Luz said some of the Indonesians hired by IOI through agencies return to Malaysia to work for the plantations giant but under a different name.

“We recognise their faces but their names are different,” she said.

She said that this is because there is a six-month cooling off period before a migrant worker can return after the three-year contract expires.