KUALA LUMPUR, Dec 7 — The Malaysian Estate Owners Association (MEOA) today warned of oil palm fruits left rotting on trees nationwide and severe losses to the country for yet another year unless the government can expedite the foreign labour recruitment process.

Its president Jeffrey Ong said the labour crunch for the oil palm plantations sector is more severe than estimated, based on the latest figures provided by government agencies.

"The shortage is around 200,000 not 120,000 that the industry estimated without government figures,” he said in a statement.

He said that data from the Plantation and Commodities Ministry, Human Resources Ministry and Immigration Department provided at the National Labour Forum organised by the Malaysian Palm Oil Association yesterday showed the industry desperately needs 200,000 workers nationwide.

He said the number of active foreign workers in the peninsula alone as of September 30 is 150,608 while the official figures for Sabah and Sarawak are as yet unknown.

With the total oil palm area in the peninsula covering 2.6 million hectares, Ong said the labour to land ratio currently stands at 1:17.

He stressed that no oil palm estate can sustainably operate beyond the ratio of 1:14.

"With the new government, hopefully with true figures revealed there will be a real positive solution.

"MEOA together with all the other stakeholders looks forward to engaging with the government and the relevant authorities to expedite the process.

"Crops are rotting on the trees and losses continue,” he said.

He said that the total number of recruitment applications for foreign workers as of November 2 was 131,164.

He said that if the government could expedite the process, this could mean a labour to land ratio of 1:9, noting that it was closer to the "normal ratio” of 1:8 that peninsular Malaysia had pre-pandemic.

Despite the severe shortage, Ong said only 56,282 recruitment applications for the sector had been approved as of October 3.

"This works out to be only 22 per cent success rate for foreign worker entry against the total approved applications,” he added.

"What is clear is that there is still a wide gap and much work to do on the recruitment and the return of foreign workers, along with the search for the numbers of foreign workers required in the plantation sector,” he said.

Malaysia is the world’s second largest palm oil producer after Indonesia, but planters have been suffering losses for the third year due to the massive manpower shortage in harvesters during peak season, international news wire Reuters reported in September.

It forecasted a fall in palm oil output this year compared to the 18.1 million tonnes produced in 2021.