FGV group sustainability head Nurul Hasanah Ahamed Hassain Malim.
KUALA LUMPUR: Numerous steps have been taken by FGV Holdings Bhd
to resolve the violation of human rights allegations against the company since the US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) issued a Withhold Release Order (WRO) back in September 2020.
FGV group chief sustainability officer Nurul Hasanah Ahamed Hassain Malim said apart from receiving an email informing the group of the WRO, no other information was given on who needed to be contacted or what the actual allegations were.
“I was just told we would need to appoint a third party to do a verification and validation process and that is when we decided to engage LRQA, a global provider of digitally enabled assurance services to take on this role,” she told StarBiz.
Fast forward to today, Nurul Hasanah said the group together with LRQA developed a remediation plan in 2022 and began working its way to correct the wrongs that were affecting workers.
“There were 12 areas identified where we could enhance practices and so we began. We started out by allocating RM112mil to reimburse both former and current workers, with RM73mil going to the latter,” she said.
She pointed out that the largest number of workers come from India, Indonesia and Bangladesh. The reimbursement to former workers will continue until the end of 2024, while existing workers reimbursement began in March last year and was completed in September 2023.
“The reimbursement was from workers having needed to pay recruitment fees, which should not have taken place. We have always worked with legal recruitment agencies both in Malaysia and the home countries, but illegal practices still took place,” she says.
Nurul Hasanah said in fact, FGV has suspended three recruitment agencies so far as they were not demonstrating the appropriate and ethical standards that were expected of them.
Other than that, Nurul Hasanah said housing issues were another concern, particularly for the rural areas such as in Sabah and Pahang.
“Some areas deep in the estate had no water supply or electricity. The access to the Internet was minimal or none at all. So last year, the board approved RM605mil for housing improvement including for constructing new housing areas which starts this year and will run until 2026,” she said.
Proper sanitation, access to water and electricity as well as the Internet is also something they are currently working on in hopes of improving worker conditions.
Nurul Hasanah said an interesting result of this process was the formation of a “Jawatankuasa Komunikasi Harmoni” that was aimed at creating and fostering an engagement and communication between the group and its workers.
“Having workers from different countries means there were cultural differences that needed to be addressed.
“Right now, we have about 28,000 workers across all our sites in Malaysia with Indian workers being the largest group. So it has been vital to engage with all of them so there is more openness and acceptance among each other,” she says.Furthermore, FGV now has multiple channels of communication for workers to either give feedback, air grievances or make complaints.
“Every worker has an app where they submit complaints. If they do not know how to write, they can use a voice recorder and speak in their own language.
A hotline called ‘Suara Kami’ was also developed and is operational in 20 out of the 189 sites we have -- we are looking at expanding it to all at some point,” she said.
Meanwhile, when asked what was the biggest lesson learnt, Nurul Hasanah said becoming complacent in practices can be detrimental to businesses.
She said as she entered the group in 2019, she realised that change was constantly happening and people needed to move in tandem with it.
“What we dealt with were not new matters, but it was new to FGV. With all the initiatives now being put in, we are very hopeful that the WRO will be modified by this year,” she said.
LRQA began its final assessment in February 2024 to confirm all issues have been remediated, and this will be completed in April 2024.
“We are aiming to submit the petition to modify the WRO in June 2024, we can expect some post engagement with CBP after we submit all the necessary documents. They usually take between six and 12 months to review the cases and make a decision,” she said.
Nurul Hasanah said in terms of manpower hours put into the efforts by FGV to rectify this issue, it has peaked at over one million hours so far.
“We are making solid attempts at righting the wrongs. What matters now are the actions we are taking, and the lessons we are learning.” — By Lydia Nathan
