Plantation workers face eviction woes

The Kamiri estate ex-workers fight against eviction is drawing to a close. After hearing submissions from Guthrie’s and the ex-workers’ lawyers, Pn Sabariah, the Senior Registrar of the Ipoh High Court had fixed 23 April 2003 as the day to announce her decision whether to refer Guthrie’s application for vacant possession of the quarters currently occupied by the ex-workers to the High Court Judge for re-hearing or whether she would give the decision herself.

If Guthrie is granted a Summary Judgement for vacant possession, the ex-workers will face the prospect of being forcibly evicted from their homes by Guthrie personnel escorted by Court Balliffs and the police within the following month. This actually took place in Ladang Bukit Jelutong, another Guthrie estate in Shah Alam, on 26 June 2002 when Guthrie moved in and demolished all the existing houses in the estate three weeks after obtaining a default judgement in the Shah Alam High Court.

Calls for Dialogue Ignored

Since their retrenchment in December 1999, the Guthrie ex-workers in Sg Siput have sent 17 letters to Guthrie calling for a dialogue asking for better terms of compensation. They had only been offered the bare minimum as stipulated under the Employment Act – 20 days wages for each year of service. Given their meagre wages of RM16 per day, this has worked out to RM330 per year of service – a ridiculous total of RM 9,900 for 30 years of sweat and labour. And there is no provision in the Employment Act for compensation of any sort for the loss of accommodation. However, all these letters asking for dialogue have been met with stony silence. (See Table)

Eviction Proceedings

In 2002 Guthrie engaged Skrine & Co, one of the largest legal firms in the country to institute legal proceedings to evict their former workers. The ex-workers of Kamiri Estate managed to find a young lawyer who was prepared to help them for free and filed their defence that:

• the compensation paid to them was not fair because it was based on their earnings in 1999 – a period of particularly low earnings because the management had cut back on field maintenance, fertilizer and latex stimulants as management had already made the decision to cease rubber production.
• Guthrie had made promises to start a housing scheme for workers in the late 1980s. Many workers stayed on in the estate because of this expectation.

Perak Menteri Besar Passes the Buck

Retrenchment benefits offered to the workers in Dec 1999
Initials of Workers	Years of Service	Average Daily Wage (RM)	Compensation Offered (RM)
JM	25+	16.18	8,300
MN	26+	15.76	8,305
MS	24+	17.26	8,457
PV	30	15.58	9,348
GV	23+	16.74	7,918

As early as August 2000, seven months after retrenchment, the retrenched workers went to see the Menteri Besar asking him to assist them in resolving this issue of a fair compensation. Since then they have sent in no fewer than 14 letters to the Menteri Besar’s Office but each time they have been shunted off to other Exco members such as Datuk G Rajoo and later Dato Chang Ko Youn. Both these Exco members have murmured their sympathies and promised to arrange meetings with Guthrie. However that meeting never materialized. Despite 30 months of waiting and repeated requests for a meeting with the MB, they have so far not had the opportunity to meet the MB.

What? You Want Alternative Housing for Free?!

This was the irritated response of Abdul Karim, the Senior Private Secretary at the Menteri Besar’s Office, when the workers met him on one of their visits to obtain an appointment to meet the MB. The workers explained that their request for subsidized alternative housing is reasonable because:

• they have laboured for decades for exceedingly low wages. Hence, they have insufficient savings now to buy a house in the open market.
• Guthrie failed to implement Tun Razak’s 1974 policy that plantation companies should start housing schemes for all their workers. Had Guthrie done so, once the workers started living in their own houses, they would have started receiving a monthly allowance for housing as stipulated in the Malaysian Agriculture Producers Association-National Union of Plantation Workers (MAPA-NUPW) Collective Agreement. Over the past 20 years, the cumulative housing allowance that they would each have received would have exceeded RM16,000 which was the price of estate houses in the early 1980s.
• National Land Finance Cooperative Society (NLFCS), a company with much less financial reserves compared to giants such as Guthrie, has implemented this “Workers’ Own Housing” scheme in most of its estates. If NLFCS, a relatively newcomer to the field, could do this why didn’t Guthrie?

Every once in a while, State politicians will give lip service to Tun Razak’s scheme and berate the plantation companies for not fulfilling their social responsibility – the latest in the series of such statements was by Kedah Exco member Datuk Osman Md Aji (quoted in The Star 14 Feb 2003):

“It is only fair that the estates, which have reaped huge profits from the service rendered by the rubber tappers, provide them with housing. They must work hand-in-hand with state government to take care of the welfare of estate workers. By providing housing to the affected workers, they could help arrest social and economic problems faced by retrenched estate workers.”

This suggestion nearly induced hysterics in Dato Chang Ko Youn, the ADUN for Jalong, Sg Siput (U). “We do not have the power. The law only allows us to take land for public purposes like roads and drains. The government can’t take other peoples’ property. We will be sued by Guthrie,” he said when the workers put this option to him.

But he is factually incorrect. Section 3 of the Land Acquisition Act (Act 486) reads:

3. Acquisition of land
The State Authority may acquire any land which is needed –

1. for any public purpose;
2. by any person or corporation for any purpose which in the opinion of the State Authority is beneficial for the economic development of Malaysia or any part thereof or to the public generally or any class of the public; or
3. for the purpose of mining or for residential, agricultural, commercial or industrial or recreational purposes or for any combination of such purposes.

• to provide housing (subsection c)
• for the benefit of retrenched estate workers who constitute a class of the public (subsection b)
• and it would serve a public purpose (subsection a) by sending an unequivocal message to the 220 estates in Perak State which have yet to implement a workers’ own housing scheme that if they fail to do so, the government will use this Act to give housing lots should there be any retrenchment of their workers.

Fight to the End!

Frustrated by Guthrie’s refusal to even respond to their letters, the workers demonstrated in front of Tan Sri Musa Hitam’s Citibank office in Jln Ampang KL on 14 March 2003 much to the chagrin and consternation of the Citibank officials who weren’t amused with our terming their discomfirture as “collateral damage”.

This demonstration paved the way to the first dialogue session with Guthrie on 7 April 2003, chaired by Musa, current Guthrie chairman, and attended by several senior Guthrie officers including Tan Sri Khalid, the Guthrie CEO. Musa chaired this dialogue session in a fair and dignified manner but made no promises except to say that he had taken note of all the workers’ grievances and would discuss these with Guthrie’s senior officers. One of the requests that the workers put forward at this meeting was the cessation of all court action to give the dialogue process time to settle the issues. Clearly that request has not been granted – the 16 April 2003 case in the Ipoh High Court went on as scheduled.

The ex-workers of Kamiri estate have decided that that they have no options left, and precious little time. If there is no positive response from Musa Hitam or from the State Government within the week, their only option at this eleventh hour is to redouble their efforts to get the Perak Menteri Besar to use his authority to ensure a fair resolution to their problems. Let’s all wish them luck. That’s the least that we can do as members of this caring society.

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