Saya tidak berhasrat untuk menterjemahkan semua sekali. Fakta dan keadaan hidup para peneroka Felda harus dirakam disini.

Peneroka FELDA menanam mengikut apa yang tercatat dalam kontrek dan seliaan pihak yang membeli, yakni FELDA sendiri. Setiap bulan mereka menerima gaji yang sudah dipotong kerana kos mendudukki tanah, membeli baja atau racun, membayar insuran dan barangan runcit yang dibeli dari kedai Felda.

Seorang peneroka bernama En Hormat yang mempunyai lapan orang anak hanya mendapat RM80 sahaja selepas ditolak semua potongan. Seorang dari jirannya terpaksa memberhentikan anak mereka bersekolah kerana tidak mampu membayar kos pengangkutan.

Ini bermakna petani seperti En Hormat cuma berpendapatan kasar sekitar RM400 sahaja sebulan. Ini di bawah paras kemiskinan negara (RM 450 sebulan).

Ada petani yang menjual kepada pihak ketiga hasil tani mereka walaupun ini bercanggah kepada kontrek tetapi apakan daya, mereka sudah terpaksa kerana bantuan tidak tiba-tiba.

Yang menariknya kebanyakkan ladang FELDA ini berada dinegri yang kuat UMNOnya dan kuat judinya juga - iaitu Pahang Darul Kasino. Dan terdapat 103,000 peneroka seumpama mereka di seluruh negara dan rata-rata melayu belaka. Sekiranya masalah mereka dibiarkan sahaja Umno akan kehilangan undi yang tidak sedikit jumlahnya.

Nampaknya kemelesetan ekonomi akan menggugat negeri yang dulunya milik tradisi UMNO. Pahang dengan kelapa sawitnya dan Selangor serta Johor dengan pekerja kilang elektroniknya. Mungkinkah ini satu hukum karma kerana menghukum manusia yang tidak berdosa dan memangkah dacing yang tidak berguna?

-TJ Kapal Berita-

From The Singapore Straits Times
28th February 2001

Felda farmers suffer as palm oil prices dive

With prices at a 13-year low, farmers take home as little as RM100 a month. Some take up a second job, working 18-hour days for little pay

By Joceline Tan

IN KUALA LUMPUR

THE faces of the Malay men at the tea-stall said it all. They were grim, and weather-beaten, and the men spoke in somber tones.

They are oil palm farmers or smallholders from a government Federal Land Development Agency (Felda) plantation named 'Triang 3' in Temerloh, Pahang. And they have been hard-hit by the lowest palm oil prices in 13 years.

Like oil palm growers elsewhere in the country, they were in no laughing mood.

'Last month, after deducting this and that with the Felda office, there was only RM80 to take home,' Mr Hormat Abdul Rahman, 48 and a father of eight, said to explain how desperate the situation had become for some of them.

One of his neighbours stopped sending his children to school as he could not fork out the few ringgit for transportation.

Overproduction of palm oil worldwide has depressed crude oil prices to about RM800 (S$360) per tonne or about RM110 per tonne of fresh fruit bunches.

It means farmers like Mr Hormat end up with barely RM400 per month, with the take-home amount at less than RM100 after deductions by Felda for costs and expenses such as the loan for the farm, fertiliser, insurance and sundry goods from the Felda store.

Pahang, where Mr Hormat's scheme is located, has 97 of the 275 Felda schemes, making it the state with the most number of such estates.

The plight of farmers of like Mr Hormat has not gone unnoticed by Umno, Malaysia's ruling political party.

It cannot afford not to, given that these schemes are 99 per cent Malay populated and sitting squat in the Malay heartland.

In fact, Umno has reacted with remarkable speed.

A Cabinet committee headed by Deputy Prime Minister Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi has been set up to study ways to help the farmers.

Felda has been directed to set aside RM70 million to subsidise the farmers following a meeting between Umno Youth and the Ministry of Land and Cooperative Development.

A mass replanting incentive of RM1,000 per hectare that will cost the government RM200 million is also underway.

'The government should also consider stopping the monthly deductions from the farmers' income for the time being. A family of six or seven cannot live on RM500 a month,' said lawyer Ismail Sabri Yaakob, an energetic Umno Youth politician from Temerloh.

The poverty level in Malaysia is RM450 per household per month.

'This is a very serious issue for us,' said Mr Ismail who heads the Youth wing's action committee on Felda farmers.

Felda was a 1970s brainchild of the second Malaysian Prime Minister, Tun Abdul Razak Hussein, to open up agricultural estates for land-hungry Malays.

Today, its schemes are home to some 103,000 settler-families over a land area approximately seven times the size of Singapore.

The farmers move into what are basically 'ready-made farms' which they pay for over a number of years while they work the land.

Since the price plunge, some farmers have resorted to selling their harvest to private factories for immediate cash, an illegal act as they are bound by contract to sell their fruit only to Felda; Felda pays them at the end of the month.

A number of farmers from Triang 3 have also been forced to seek second jobs outside the scheme as petrol pump attendants, dishwashers in restaurants, gardeners and so on.

That means a working day that starts as early as 5 am and ends as late as 11 pm - a long day for very little pay.