NCR land owners prefer personal oil palm plantations

SARIKEI: Many owners of native customary rights (NCR) land in Julau are interested to open their own palm oil plantations. According to Christopher Ijau Mudai, a former councillor of Meradong/Julau District Council who talked to The Borneo Post yesterday, he was one of those landowners in Julau who were not keen to participate in a proposed joint-venture oil palm plantation with Sime Darby.“We are not anti-development. It’s just that the joint-venture concept is not appealing to us,” said Christopher who claimed to be among the landowners from over 10 longhouses in Julau who had opted out of the proposed joint-venture deal.“We want an alternative way that we feel comfortable with,” Christopher said, apparently referring to an idea suggested by Edward Chun Jelian in The Borneo Post’s article under the headline ‘NCR landowners want loans to start own mini estates’ last Friday.

Edward has said that if there were special loan facilities made available by the government, most owners of NCR land would go for them as the doors of commercial banks were closed to them.
Edward had also claimed that he did hear of credit facilities such as the government’s Modal Usahawan Tani (MUST) or Palm Oil Replanting Scheme (TASKS) made available through AgroBank, but he was not sure whether these were extended to owners of NCR land.
As proposed by Edward, each family would start off with 10 acres, which he believed was manageable by every household, Edward said.But to do that, each family would require RM50,000 in loan for clearing the jungle, make terraces, construct access road and bridges and to obtain 500 seedlings.

Unfortunately, the quantum of loan from TASKS is RM6,000 per hectare, so Edward hoped that banks would give exception to their case.He believed the proposed 10-acre plantation was capable of generating an income of RM3,000 per harvest twice a month.“After deducting operations cost and loan repayment, each household could still earn over RM1,000 per month which is well above the poverty line,” he said.