Here’s a 5 min guide to understanding the Cameron Highlands farmer drama

The week of Christmas wasn’t really jolly to some, especially to about 200 people, who apparently protested at Cameron Highlands. And this protest may have something to do with the strawberry farms there. 

You can watch this video of the alleged protest:

These people are mostly farmers, whose farms were apparently illegal and responsible for the pollution at Kuala Terla’s water catchment area. This water catchment supplies water to 70% of the population in Cameron Highlands.

This may be why, earlier that week, the police, military and (apparently) a team of Federal Reserve Unit (FRU) came to about 60 farms at Sungai Ichat, Kuala Terla, Cameron Highlands to clear the farms up. They did this under an operation called Ops Lestari 2 (more about this later).

This sparked a protest by the farmers, who went all out to protect the farms that they’ve been working on for about three generations! But when we dug in deeper…

Surprisingly, the operation is kinda in line with… the Agong’s orders?!

Yeap, the operation is reportedly in line with the words of the Yang di-Pertuan Agong Al-Sultan Abdullah Ri’ayatuddin Al-Mustafa Billah Shah, who made a visit to the farms back in September 2019.

However, the plan to remove these illegal farms didn’t originate from the Agong la but it has been around for years since the BN era. In 2014, the then govt started up an operation called Ops Gading (now known as Ops Lestari 2) to overcome the rampant opening of land and the uncontrolled cutting of hills in Cameron Highlands. The operation involved 14 state and federal agencies and departments including the police and military.

Although Ops Gading may seem like it has been running for years, according to an anonymous local farmer believes that the govt’s effort failed.

So, by the time the Harapan govt took over Putrajaya in 2018, the govt has continued the operation because the Deputy Prime Minister, Dr Wan Azizah believes that Cameron Highlands is a major contributor to the sustainability of the national agricultural sector and national food security supply.

“As such, we must ensure the environment is maintained and the welfare of the small farmers and Orang Asli are taken care of. The safety of Orang Asli villages in steep (hilly) areas must be given specific attention besides the well-being of the Orang Asli who are part of the important community in Cameron Highlands.” – Wan Azizah to Bernama.

And one of the ways is by stopping illegal farmers from continuing their activities. The activities of these illegal farmers is said to be causing water pollution in Sungai Ichat besides disrupting the water supply to the residents of Cameron Highlands and the cause to occurrences of landslides.

Oddly enough, according to Perai assemblyperson, P Ramasamy claimed that the polluted river was not Sungai Ichat but Sungai Terla. He emphasised that the state govt is not taking any action against the settlement at Sungai Terla although the settlement is one of the causes of the water pollution.

“This has been pointed out to the state government many times. But why the state government took more interest in demolishing the farms located near Sungai Ichat that were not the cause of water pollution remains a mystery.” – Ramasamy to Malaysiakini.

Despite these claims, some believe that…

The farms actually used to be legal

In defense of the farmers, Tanah Rata’s state assemblyman, Chiong Yoke Kong believe that the farmers were defamed by the state govt.

“Meanwhile, Cameron Highlands MP Ramli Mohd Noor and Slim (Perak) assemblyperson Khusairi Abdul Talib defamed the local farmers by labelling them as illegal encroachers to evade the state government’s responsibility of relocating the farmers.” – Chiong, an excerpt from Malaysiakini.

He may not be wrong tho because, as it turns out, they do have licences to operate their farms. This licence is known as the Temporary Occupation Licence (TOL) and it comes with an annual fee. It’s given to farmers, business and building owners when they needed land from the govt to operate whichever type of businesses they chose.

And, as the name goes, it’s only temporary la. So if you have a TOL, that only means you gotta renew it yearly. And Chiong mentioned that the govt actually allowed many farmers to renew their TOLs in 2017. 

However, the state govt has made the process of renewing TOLs very mafan for the farmers and this became one of the many reasons as to why these farmers ended up being deemed as illegal.

“When they say a lot of illegal farming operators are mostly local farmers, this is due to them not being able to renew their licences on time. (But) we still have to carry on with our lives as farmers because this is our bread and butter.” – A restaurant/farm owner in Cameron Highlands told FMT.

At the time of writing, there are about 3,000 TOL applications that the state govt has yet to be approved by the state govt. And this didn’t help that the state govt is only processing 10 applications per month. In addition to that, you can’t get TOLs anymore because the state govt no longer issues this licence since 2008. The state govt may have done this to curb any land-clearing activities for agricultural purposes.

Besides that, some of these licence holders were said to be dishonest people. The 2012 Auditor-General’s report revealed that some of these holders have breached requirements stated in their licences by doing one of the following:

• Operated a different business than the one stated in the licence
• Extended their business on a land that wasn’t loaned to them (most farmers tend to do this)
• Sold off buildings that were built on the loaned land to a third party
• Failed to pay TOL’s annual fee.

When it comes to TOL, the problem goes beyooooooooond just farmers. But that’s a story for another day la. Coming back to the farmer drama…

…it’s not like the govt came knocking on their door outta blue and started demolishing the structures on their farms. These farmers have been issued with an eviction notice since… a DECADE ago! Despite that, the farmers didn’t move out and were then issued with a second notice on February 2019.

In response to the second notice, the farmers have obtained an injunction from the Kuantan High Court in March 2019 to prevent the authorities from demolishing their farms. However, this injunction was later withdrawn, and Ramasamy believes that MIC members had apparently influenced the farmers to withdraw the injunction. But the MIC secretary-general M Asojan denied this has happened and said that the farmers had done it voluntarily.

While all this drama was happening, back in Cameron Highlands, the authorities have continued to demolish the farms with the latest Ops Lestari 2, which started on 23rd December 2019. This pretty much led to the aforementioned protest at Kuala Terla by the farmers, including some politicians and local council members. And right now…

The farmers only have until 3rd January 2020 to leave their farms behind

The protest that was staged by the farmers earlier last week ended up with seven people being arrested including former Padang Serai MP, N Gobalakrishnan. They were then released on a police bail after they gave their statements to the police.

Despite the allegations that we mentioned earlier, MIC members were actually present during the protest to support the farmers. MIC central working committee member MP Nathan explained that MIC as actually hoping that the state govt to would give the farmers an extension to harvest their vegetables, fruits and flowers. But that didn’t happen la because the state govt is only giving the farmers until 3rd January 2020 to vacate the land.

At the time of writing, about 70% of the vegetable farms have been vacated over the weekends. This is because the state govt has given the farmers three days over for them to remove their equipment on the land. But the farmers felt that the time given was a bit too short.

“It is impossible to clean out everything in three days. We need at least two years. I had to rent a store that cost me RM1,600 per month.” – Farmer, S. Mathan told NST.

Although the farmers are already packing their stuff and leaving the land, they are still pleading the state govt to provide them with an alternative site for them to be relocated to. But, at the moment, there is no news stating that the state govt would be doing that anytime soon.

“The state government should deal with the problem in a humane way by considering the livelihood of hundreds of farmers here and giving us a better way out.” – Mathan told NST.

Despite the hoo-haa that happened in Cameron Highlands these past few weeks before the New Years, the Pahang police chief Datuk Abd Jalil Hassan assured the public that it is safe to travel up there. And by this time around, hopefully there’ll be no other protest and the farmers would have safely moved to another place.