PENYATA RASMI - Parlimen Malaysia

1537 31 JANUARI 1974
Next I will go into specific problems of
poverty eradication. One of the biggest
agricultural programmes that is being undertaken
under this Second Malaysia Plan is to
increase the planted acreage of land by
FELDA. Now, there is a lot of little
rumblings among the FELDA settlers, in the
sense that a lot of them complain that they
do not know how much they owe the
Government. It is a very susah state of
affairs where the poor people from the
kampung, although they might not have very
much in the beginning, now that they have
been moved to the FELDA schemes, they
trod that they are owing the Government in
money and they do not know how much
they are owing the FELDA authorities. Now
I think this is basically a deficiency in administration
rather than policy. I think that the
authority should do something in settling
this problem of deficiency in administration.
There is also another complaint from the
farmers who intend to go into the FELDA
scheme in the sense they would prefer the
Government to give them land where they
can develop and run it themselves so that
they do not have to bear the high cost of
maintaining administrators. They can become
their own administrators. One reason is the
cost of development of an acre of land in
FELDA is round about $1,200-$1,300 per
acre whereas the farmers who develop the
land themselves can do it in the range of
$7004800 and they say why should they
pay an extra $404-$500 by going into the
FELDA schemes. They are wasting $400-
$500 of their work, In this respect I think
FELDA could help themselves if they would
consider having inter-cropping of cash crops
in between the rubber or the oil palm during
the years when the rubber and oil palm trees
that have been planted are taking time to
grow up before they can yield. I think by
allowing inter-cropping, the people who have
been contracted to develop the FELDA
schemes could then perhaps lessen their
cost of development of these schemes.
I have just imentioned the importance of
farmers' organisations authority and farmers'
associations to the poor smallholders in the
kampungs and new villages. These are the
people who are most hard hit, in the sense
they have little plots of land and they do not
know much of the mode of distribution and
how to get the best prices for their produces.
It is in this area that the vicious middlemen
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act most. I hope the farmers' authority
would spend more money in publicising
their organisation and I hope that they will
induce more farmers to join their organisation
whereby with a properly run organisation
the mode of distribution of their primary
product could be improved.
Now I would like to mention a bit on our
rapid industrial programme in this country.
We hear now that a lot of industrial estates,
like those in Bayan Lepas. Seberang Prai,
Kamunting, Tasek are coming up. But if you
go to these industrial estates you will find that
only factories are coming up and there are
practically no housing schemes going up there
along-side at all. :
Now we are concentrating a lot on labourintensive
industries, especially electronics
and textiles, and these industries engage very
young labour--that means, our boys and
girls between the ages of 18 and 21. Now
they are a temporary transitional working
class. That means they go there to acquire
skills and perhaps in three or four years'
time they will jump on to better jobs and
better prospects. But some of them do come
from quite far distances and with the cheap
labour that the Government has been
hankering about in attracting foreign investment,
it is impossible for them to look after
themselves. They have to look for a house
to stay or, worse still, they have to rent a
room. and with the increased industrialisation,
increased development, the cause of
renting rooms has increased dramatically. So
for a person who earns $2 a day or even
$3 a day, with $90 a month, he will be lucky
if he can get a $20 room. For $20 to spend
on a room, I think that is too much for him.
In this respect, I hope the Government would
consider building public housing, hostellike
accommodation for these young people
to live in. Of course, when our young boys
and girls have to do shift work in these areas
and in the middle of the night or at 3 o'clock
in the morning when they leave work and
with the lack of taxis and buses at such a
time of the night, how do they go back to
the places where they are residing? To walk
3 miles for any girl or a group of girls means
inviting trouble--at 3 o'clock in the
morning. In this respect, I think the Ministry
of Local Government and Housing could,
perhaps, come up with a proposal to build