LOOKING back, Bakar Hashim is glad he did not go with the flow and take up Felda’s replanting scheme.

At a time when most of his friends in Felda Chini Timur Satu chose to  surrender the management of their smallholdings to Felda in return for replanting, Bakar stood firm as he felt something was not quite right about the agreement.

He thought the terms were fuzzy and could bind his children and grandchildren to debt.

Instead, Bakar forked out RM15,000 to replant his four-hectare plot. That, he said, was much lower than the RM100,000 it would cost some of his friends who had signed on for the Felda replanting scheme.

Bakar said he cleared his plantation by poisoning the old trees and bought oil palm seedlings, which he paid labourers to plant, and later, fertilise. 

After three years, Felda paid him RM17,000 from the replanting fund and RM5,000 for removing the old trees.

“As such, I didn’t lose RM15,000 by replanting but instead made a profit of RM7,000, and did not have to surrender my land to Felda to take part in its programme,” Bakar told The Malaysian Insight in Chini.

Felda Chini Timur 1 is one of the Felda settlements in the Pekan constituency, which MP is Prime Minister Najib Razak.

The 62-year-old settler said he turned down Felda’s offer to replant his plantation after speaking with his children.

Bakar said it was really a bit of luck that his son, Mohamad Hisommudin Bakar had attended the briefings about the replanting scheme.

Hisommudin, who was a university student activist, said what he heard did not make sense. Felda had told the settlers that they would surely fail if they tried to replant themselves and would only succeed if they went with Felda.

At the time, Hisommudin said, almost all of the 400 settlers in attendance had agreed with him, so much so that the Felda officers decided it was no use going on and called the meeting to an end.

After Hisommudin had returned to campus, however, Felda officers returned to persuade the settlers to sign up for the replanting scheme.

“In the end, only my father and 10 more settlers decided not to sign the replanting agreement and to work their own lands,” Hisommudin told The Malaysian Insight.

But people like his family were the minority and Hisommudin said only 5% of the settlers decided to do the work themselves. The rest took up  Felda’s offer.

Not following the herd

Hisommudin’s mother, Hawariah Mohamad, said it was hard work doing the replanting themselves. 

“Our house was filled with oil palm seedling. Even the neighbours would make fun of us. They used to ask us what the seedling were and I said they were snake fruit,” said Hawariah.

The snake fruit seedling resembles the oil palm seedling.

Hawariah also remembers the pressure on the family for not going with the herd.

“It was like Israel pressuring the Palestinians,” said the retired religious teacher.

Hisommudin said his father was tempted to give up many times 

“My father wanted to give up and let Felda take over. But we discussed it as a family, we asked him to hang on,” said the Ilham Centre executive director.

Reaping what he sowed

But all that hard work has paid off.  The family now hold their heads high in the village where they were once shunned for daring to rebel.

Bakar earns RM5,000-RM5,500 each month from the oil palms and he is debt free, to boot.

His fellow settlers who took up the replanting scheme, meanwhile, draw RM2,000 to RM3,000 a month. And, they owe Felda for replanting their land and for the living allowance the agency paid them. The debts run into the tens of thousands of ringgit.

Some have been receiving the monthly living allowance for 12 years. The living allowance is a loan or advance for the settlers that is supposed to tide them over until the new trees bear fruit, about three years after replanting.

These days, Bakar’s role is that of the plantation owner. He no longer does the heavy work and his youngest son supervises the workers, who are mainly from Indonesia and Bangladesh. 

Bakar has a small lorry to transport the oil palm bunches and has started rearing cows. He has 50 heads of cattle.

“With the cows and everything, my father earns around RM10,000 a month,” said Hisommudin.  – November 21, 2017.