By TK Chua
Federal Land Development Authority (Felda) was one of the rare successes of socio-economic engineering in our country.
It has brought a decent life to many settlers from its inception in the 1950s.
It was established as a statutory body and for years Felda was managed by technocrats. The objective was modest — to bring about poverty alleviation, especially among the rural poor.
Over time, Felda became a very rich and well-endowed organisation, more due to its large holding of land throughout the country when land was acquired at a pittance.
In tandem, the settlers and the government should have become very rich too, benefiting from income and capital appreciation from their investment.
But what happened in recent years was most unfortunate. For reasons which are quite beyond my comprehension, settlers are now saddled with endless borrowings and debts.
Instead of becoming rich and comfortable, the settlers are now in a constant tussle with Felda over their rights and benefits.
Instead of becoming independent, based on what they own, they are now in constant need of “special bonus/payments” from the government.
The problem did not stop there. With corporate bigwigs, consisting of former politicians, indulging in “investing” and “venturing”, the problems in Felda have became bigger.
Almost everything they touched has become mud so far.
I have thought Felda settlers should have been given their free shares when FGV was first listed.
Instead, it was loans in exchange for shares in FGV. Did Felda settlers own anything at all in Felda before FGV was listed?
But not only that, the price of FGV has plummeted from RM5 a share at the time of listing to less than RM2 a share at present.
Did other plantation companies listed in the exchange suffer the same fate as FGV during the same period?
We should ask why, instead of making the settlers richer, we have made them more in debt and poorer.
Then what about their so many other devious and dubious investments, from luxurious hotels in London to a sturgeon fish project in Malaysia. I hope the investigations into them are still going on.
And before we can get on top of all this, we have been handed another bombshell — their prime land on Jalan Semarak in Kuala Lumpur is now embroiled in a controversy and uncertainties.
You know what; I am not optimistic at all that the latest problem in Felda and FGV will be resolved soon.
Label me a pessimist if you wish. In fact, I wish I was wrong.
TK Chua is an FMT reader.
The views expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of FMT.
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