CNI News
8 Sept 2022
Rubber plantations in Mon State have faced a shortage of labour at the beginning of the latex collection season.
Labour shortages are a common problem which plantations encounter every year but this year’s shortages are more severe than those of previous years. If we can’t find workers, we will have to collect latex with the workers we have, Ma Ei, a rubber plantation owner in Mon State, told the CNI.
She said, “We don’t have enough workers. We can hire only one-third of our labour needs. As we can’t hire workers until now, we will have to carry out our operations with workers we have the whole year. All workers have been hired by plantations. If they have problems with their plantation owners and quit their jobs or they want to move to other plantations, we will be able to hire them.”
Latex processing.
Rubber plantations in Mon State start their yearly operations in August. Small plantation owners are not able to employ workers all the year round and have to look for them when the harvesting season begins. Big plantation owners employ their workers all the year round and train them. Therefore, big plantations do not face a labour shortage.
Wages for rubber workers have also risen together with increasing prices of commodities, U Phone Myint, a rubber plantation owner, told the CNI.
He told the CNI, “It depends on the prices of commodities. We paid a worker MMK 10 per plant last year, we have to pay MMK 14 per plant this year. Similarly, we paid MMK 6,000 to daily earners last year. This year, wages of daily earners have risen to MMK 7,500.
In some areas, it is impossible to hire workers due to instabilities and only a few plantations carry out their operations.
A rubber plantation worker.
At the same time, rubber plantation owners have faced rising prices of inputs such as acids, fertilizers and materials used in production of rubber.
One of the reasons for shortages of labour in rubber plantations is that a large number of skilled rubber workers left their jobs to work in other countries.
There are more than 500,000 acres of rubber plantations, which produce more than 100,000 tons of rubber every year.
