Malakoff Corporation (a member of MMC Group) a company that boasts itself to be a leading independent water supply and power producer in Malaysia, is shamefully going to cut electricity and water to its workers’ quarters to forcefully evict them from Windsor Estate, Kamunting Perak. (Windsor Estate is a plantation wholly owned by the Malakoff Corporation)
These estate workers have worked for nearly 3 generations at the plantation, previously a rubber plantation then a palm oil plantation. They have been asking the management to implement the estate workers’ House Ownership Scheme for many years. Since 1973 the late Prime Minister Tun Abdul Razak realized that estate workers with the meager wages will not be able to afford housing when they retire and will have to vacate the estate workers’ quarters. Thus, he introduced the Estate Workers Housing Scheme in 1973. Unfortunately only a handful of plantation owners have embarked on such a scheme, where a portion of the estate land is allocated to build and sell houses for the workers to own. A reasonable portion of their wages is deducted every month to pay for the houses.
This scheme ensured that the workers in their golden age have a roof over their heads when they retire. Currently Sime Darby has been forthcoming to provide land for such a scheme and the Human Resources Ministry too is offering special loans through BSN if workers are allocated a portion of the plantation land to finance building their houses there.
Workers of Windsor Estate sent their latest request on 31st December 2019 to Malakoff to call for a meeting to discuss a housing scheme project. However, Malakoff has refused to respond . Rather it disappointingly issued a notice on 28th July, 2020 to its workers to vacate their quarters. A second notice was issued last week, 12th August, 2020, giving the workers one week to vacate the quarters.
The workers were informed that tomorrow, 19th August , 2020 the management would disconnect water and electricity supply to their houses and carry out forced eviction.
PSM condems Malakoff Corporation’s irresponsible and shameful act and demands that they immediately cease all intentions to evict the workers forcefully. Malakoff Corporation should engage with the affected workers to embark on a house ownership scheme.
It is despicable that an independent power generation megacorp seeks to deny its own estate workers their basic right to power and water!
We also call on the Human Resources Ministry to immediately intervene to stop this gross injustice to these workers.
Sivarajan A
PSM Secretary General