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3. Unpleasant dealings with the locals

• With A Building Contractor

When the land had been cleared for planting of young oil palm seedlings during the second half of 2001, I reserved an area of about six acres fronting the main road for a fruit orchard and building my dreamed timber house. Fruit seedlings of various types, like durain, mango, mangosteen, duku, dukong, dukulansat and campadak were bought from a nursery in Muar and planted after completion of planting of all the oil palm seedlings. A sprinkler irrigation system for the orchard drawing water from a well was also been planned.

My intention of residing more permanently in our plantation was not being well received by all the parties that I had come in contact with. Their main concern was safety. Firstly, many young people in the kampongs and villages nearby were addicted to drugs and unemployed and they had committed many robberies in and around the area. Secondly, the presence of illegal immigrants had compounded the dire situation. Furthermore, living in a gland new building and driving a flashy car would make many eyes grow red.

I appreciated their concern and did not immediately go ahead with my plan as I wanted to take my time to assess the situation. By mid 2002 I began to have reservation about my grandiose plan of living part time in our plantation. First, I found it difficult to deal with and to be on friendly terms with the local people. I even found it difficult to tell the two fruit farmers in our plantation to do what they should be doing under the lease. One even gave me a hint that he was a “taiko” and everybody in Pagoh must give him the respect. Second, the many illegal immigrants swarming the area in the evenings made me quite jittery. So by the end of 2002 I finally decided to abandon my original plan. Earlier I had already abandoned the fruit orchard as many young plants were stolen. The area was replanted with oil palms.

But I needed to have at least a “halfway house” in the plantation so that on my visits I had a place to rest. During that period of time, I used to travel from home in Petaling Jaya and transit in my second brother’s house in Muar. I would take him along with me to the plantation and if I needed to stay overnight, I would put up in his house. However, my brother was getting on in age and beginning to become less mobile. Often he would prefer to stay home and not follow me to the plantation. So I had to have a contingency plan to have a safe haven in the plantation for the night as there was not a single hotel in Pagoh. Also it would be too tiring to make a return trip in a day.

In early 2003, I needed to renovate the existing workers quarters to accommodate at least three foreign workers I intended to hire. And as I had abandoned my plan to build the timber house, I intended to salvage what I could from the old quarters and rebuild a new one in the location I had reserved for the timber building. After a close inspection of the quarters, I realized that the main frame, i.e. columns and roof trusses, was built with Rezak hardwood which could be reused.

A contractor, Boon, in Batu 23 Village was recommended to me by Kim Tong who had known him for many years. I discussed with Boon one morning at the site and told him what I wanted to do with the quarters. As an experienced contractor, he understood my intention and quickly he made some measurements and gave me a quotation. After a quick negotiation we agreed with a lump sum of RM25,000 for completion in three months. Within a week or so he commenced his work by demolishing the old quarters and salvaging the pieces of timber that could be reused. I was pleased with his work and I would not hesitate to give him progress payments whenever he requested. In two months, the roof was up and the progress was satisfactory.

But suddenly he absconded from the construction site and his daily-paid workers were left stranded with no payment received for a week. I checked my account and realized that I had already paid him RM23,000. He left most of his tools behind and no body knew where he was, not even his family. Obviously it was another sad case of owing money to “Ah Long”. After his disappearance I have not seen him since.

He left two good local workers, one Malay from Kampong Rencong and one Chinese from Batu 23. I retained both and they completed the work in about a month. When completed with water, electricity and a septic tank, I overshot my budget by more than 20%!

    
Workers' Quarters & Cabin

Inside my Cabin

One side of the new quarters was allocated to the workers. It has two bedrooms, a living cum dining room, a flush toilet and a kitchen, all complete with all basic furniture and fittings. On the other end I installed a 20’x10’x8’ steel cabin fully furnished and complete with air-con and hot-water shower. This cabin has since become my living quarters during my many sojourns in the plantation. At the back of my cabin there is a store and a parking space for our Kubota, an agriculture tractor.

• With Harvesting Contractors

It was my intention to employ foreign workers to do harvesting and all ancillary works in the plantation. By early 2004, the palms were just over two and a half years old and some were already fruiting. As I failed to recruit additional foreign workers, I had to engage a local contractor to harvest the fruits.

Ripening fruits in young palms

A contractor who was a harvester engaged by a big oil palm estate was introduced to me. After agreeing on the rates for pruning of fronds and harvesting of fruits, he started work in mid April. He brought two workers to our plantation to work under his supervision and he was also to teach my only foreign worker, Chin, the right technique to harvest the fruits. But what I noticed was that his two workers were new in this field of work. I confronted him and he told me that because his experienced workers were still busy in the other plantation, he could not send them to our plantation straight away. But he assured me that the technique of fruit harvesting was not difficult to learn. After a couple of days, with no sign of any experienced workers coming and his two workers were still as raw as when they first started, I told the Contractor to cease operation and get out of our plantation. He did and did not ask me to pay him a single cent.

For about a year after I dismissed the harvesting contractor, three illegal Indonesian workers, who were friends of Chin, were employed to harvest the fruits and keep the plantation free from weeds. Also during this period I failed to recruit suitable foreign workers though issued with necessary permits. As Chin would be leaving Malaysia for good in May 2005, and I did not wish to continue employing illegal foreign workers, I needed therefore to look for a reliable and long term harvester. After spreading my intention around Pagoh, one contractor in town, called Er, recommended by a staff of Ban Guan, was hired.

He started work in early February 2005 with four workers. My worker, Chin, showed them the way and also helped them to harvest. Each time when Er came to the plantation, he did not stay long with his workers and I noticed that he let one tough-looking Indonesian worker to take charge. (I later learnt that he was a PR and was an adopted son of a Malay Village Head.) He was at loggerheads with Chin who later refused to work with his workers.

I was not too satisfied with the performance of his workers. They were not too thorough in harvesting; leaving quite a lot of ripped bunches still on the palms uncut and the loose seeds and cut bunches uncollected. Telling Er or his charge did not improve much. The last straw came in early May when all the workers left the plantation after harvesting, leaving many cut fresh fruit bunches uncollected. Our worker, Chin had to finish the work by himself. I paid Er off and told him not to come back.

In desperation, I again aired by intention to recruit a harvesting contractor hoping against hope that I could land a reliable one this time. I also made my intention clear that I would prefer a contractor from another town nearby, not from Pagoh.

At that time I purchased my fertilizers from a company in Bukit Gambil, a small town about 30km away, but also in the Muar District. The boss of this company, Ho got wind of my problem and told me that he had the means to perform to my satisfaction. We discussed and agreed on the rates, i.e. harvesting of fruits at RM35.00 per ton, and weeding and maintenance of the plantation at RM15.00 per acre per month. The rates were higher than the prevailing ones by RM5.00 per ton on harvesting and RM5.00 per acre per month for weeding and maintenance. His workers could make use of all the facilities in our workers’ quarters and all the equipments we processed including the Kubota, but he would be responsible for their maintenance.

In mid May, he began work by sending six workers to my plantation. I noticed that five of them were Indonesians and one was a young and very capable Chinese, named Lim. When speaking to Lim later he told me that he too came from Bukit Gambil and that all the Indonesians were his workers. He merely subcontracted the whole work in our plantation and elsewhere in Bukit Gambil from Ho. He also told me that Ho would pay him RM30.00 per ton for harvesting and RM10.00 per acre per month for weeding and maintenance! I was hit like a bolt from the blue and could not believe there was such a person like Ho who could think that I was so gullible and stupid to partake with him in such a blatant unprofessional deal.

When I regained my composure, I asked Lim whether he would like to do the job for me if I appointed him directly. He replied in the affirmative; but I told him to sort out amicably with Ho. I also telephoned Ho and told him that I wanted to annul the verbal agreement I had made with him and to appoint Lim instead to do the work for me. He was angry and very rude to me over the phone, but luckily we had yet to sign the agreement which I had already prepared.

He telephoned me the next day and pleaded with me to reconsider my decision. I told him to get stuffed and also that I would not buy fertilizers from him anymore. He could very well introduce Lim to me and let me deal directly with the latter. If Ho had done that initially, I might still be purchasing fertilizers from him today. What a cheap-skate!

Fortunately that was the end of my unpleasant dealings with the locals. Lim took over on 1st June, 2005 and I delayed signing the agreement until 14th July 2005 to make sure he was performing satisfactorily. So far Lim had proven to be a good contractor though I was warned that he had a bad record in his hometown. It could possibly be that his dealing with me might have turned out to be a significant breakthrough in his life and he had now turned over a new leaf.

4. A Sad Encounter Along N-S Expressway