FEDERAL Land Development Authority (Felda), announced yesterday most of its 68 employees in its welfare arm, Yayasan Felda, will be laid off or forced to take a pay cut, reported Singapore’s The Straits Times.

An official letter is expected to be issued anytime now

“It’s to restructure Yayasan Felda in line with other equivalent foundations,” Felda chairman Shahrir Samad told the newspaper.

The foundations chief executive officer earns RM54,000 a month despite it being a non-profit charity.

“We are not discontinuing Yayasan Felda. We need to restructure it,” Shahir said, adding Yayasan Felda has an annual budget of RM10 million to manage Felda’s colleges, a dialysis centre and charities for plantation settlers’ and their families.

Felda’s former chairman Isa Samad was removed by Prime Minister Najib Razak in January and is facing a corruption probe into millions of dollars allegedly spent on buying overseas and local hotels at inflated prices.

Felda’s listed Felda Global Ventures (FGV), specialising in palm oil production, has performed poorly on the stock exchange since its listing in 2012. This has led Najib to bail out thousands of the Felda farmers who had borrowed money to buy FGV shares.

“We need to reduce the expenditure for the foundation and concentrate on providing more benefits to the settlers,” Yayasan Felda chairman Manan Ismail told The Straits Times.

“It’s not a big foundation and yet we have a CEO who’s paid RM54,000 a month. It has to be streamlined,” said Shahrir.

“He doesn’t realise he is overpaid. At RM54,000, I think is a bit too much.”

A new salary scheme will come into place next year, if any of the 24 permanent staff chooses to stay on the job. Those who decide to leave will receive severance.

Manan told the newspaper final evaluation of severance and new salary numbers will only be decided mid-December, taking into account that “most staff are families of settlers”.

As the world’s third largest palm plantation operator, Felda also has under its wings over 112,000 Malay settlers. 

Together with their family members, they total over one million people – forming a large chunk of voters occupying 54 parliamentary seats. – November 30, 2017.