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Plantation industry players and the Sabah state authority have reached an agreement to roll out a joint approach in mitigating the spread of Covid-19 by implementing a voluntary 30-day lockdown starting Jan 25 to facilitate the mass screening of workers in the oil palm estates there
KOTA KINABALU: The Malaysian Estate Owners’ Association (MEOA) has supported the Sabah government’s directive for all plantation companies to screen their workers for Covid-19 after two new clusters involving estates were detected on Friday (Jan 15).
Its president Peter Benjamin said it is also the estate owners’ social responsibility to abide by the policy for the sake of the health of all their employees.
“We should not look at this as a burden and we need to support the government in overcoming this pandemic.
“Healthy employees will also help to keep the operations (in the plantation industry) going, especially since this is an essential service,” he said on Saturday (Jan 16).
PETALING JAYA: The proposal to allow big corporations to hire foreign workers by financing the repatriation of illegal immigrants has been met with mixed reaction from labour-intensive industries.
Lauding the move, Malaysian Estate Owners Association president Peter Benjamin said the initiative shows the government is finding ways and means to reduce the number of illegal workers in the country.
“However, the government must provide more clarity and details on how it will go about it.
“They have to state the requirements clearly and make them easy to understand because such an arrangement comes with a lot of decisions, ” he said in an interview yesterday.