Petaling Jaya, 3 February 2023 - The United States Customs and Border Protection (USCBP) has modified its forced labour finding against Sime Darby Plantation Berhad (SDP), which means, effective immediately, the USCBP will now permit the importation of palm oil from SDP into the United States.

With this decision, the USCBP has recognised the comprehensive process undertaken by SDP in the last two years to review, revise and – where necessary – upgrade its protocols for recruiting, managing and working with its workers.

Mohamad Helmy Othman Basha, Group Managing Director of Sime Darby Plantation, commented: “This exercise has been hugely valuable in establishing a market-leading approach to ensure our employees feel safe, satisfied, supported and fairly treated.”

Recognising the comprehensive effort to implement change across SDP’s Malaysian operations, led by Chief Financial Officer Renaka Ramachandran and overseen by its Board Sustainability Committee, Mohamad Helmy said: “It took us more than 500,000 man-hours to undertake our reviews and to revise what we already had in place. To ensure change is embraced and entrenched, we also put in place key enablers to empower our workers. It is essential that such safeguards are in place to protect those who are vulnerable.”

SDP introduced a number of industry firsts as part of its renewed commitments. These include:

• The reimbursement of recruitment fees that may have been paid by current and eligible former workers to secure employment with SDP in contravention of its zero-recruitment fee policy. PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) was also appointed to independently validate each remediation payment.
• The introduction of stricter expectations within the Group’s enhanced Migrant Worker Responsible Recruitment Procedure which includes efforts to ensure appointed recruitment agents are contractually accountable for compliance to ethical and transparent recruitment standards, as well as SDP’s own policies and standards.
• A commitment to conduct regular due diligence on contractors to ensure they strictly adhere to SDP’s Contractor Vendor Management policies and guidelines, when managing workers.
• The creation of social dialogue platforms where workers elect representatives from every nationality to meet with estate management fortnightly. There are over 1,500 formal worker representatives from 9 nationalities, across the Group’s Malaysian operations. More than 14,200 issues have been raised, with approximately 13,800 issues resolved over 17 months.
• The setting up of three dedicated helplines, two of which are independently administered, for workers and contractors to raise grievances. Based on internal surveys of more than 21,000 workers, 96.1% are aware of, and 95.8% are comfortable with, the grievance channels.
• The introduction of controls for monitoring working hours through a process automation system to track the clock-in and clock-out time of workers to ensure maximum working hours are not breached.
• The development of a dedicated mobile application for workers to request repairs to their on-site accommodation. Over 37,000 requests have been received through this platform since its inception in October 2021, and 97% of them have been resolved within agreed time frames.
• The implementation of an ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance) scorecard in SDP’s operating units, which carries as much weight as the operational scorecard. The ESG scorecard aims to drive behavioural change and is designed with a combination of both behaviour and outcome-based indicators.

Mohamad Helmy also recognised that the sweeping changes in labour practices and standards that the Group has implemented across its operations would not have been achieved without the hard work, contributions and collaboration of many people and organisations. “Our gratitude goes foremost to all our employees for their commitment and dedication; it took us many months to get here. We also thank our current and former Directors for their guidance and wisdom, the many partners who worked with us, our shareholders and the Malaysian government for all their support and assistance. We were never alone.

“Leaving no stone unturned, Sime Darby Plantation has identified and invested in what we believe is a best-practice approach to improving the experience of our workers. We could not have done this by ourselves and we believe, that these industry-leading initiatives are a blueprint for the wider palm oil industry to follow. We would be delighted to share them with our peers and partners in the sector,” Mohamad Helmy said.

As the world’s leading sustainable palm oil producer, SDP will continue to work with non-governmental organisations and like-minded parties to advocate for change at an industry level. It is vital that the palm oil industry does all it can to meet its responsibilities to its people and to the planet.

Thanking the USCBP, Mohamad Helmy said: “Having embraced the principles of sustainable development several years ago, we already had a comprehensive range of policies and procedures in place. Many were industry leading practices at the time. Despite that, we found room for enhancements in implementation.

“Today, our commitment to all our stakeholders is vigilance and a continuing responsibility to produce palm oil that is free of forced labour.”