{"id":3356,"date":"2010-08-23T16:18:31","date_gmt":"2010-08-23T08:18:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/buletinonline.net\/v7\/index.php\/2010\/08\/felda-chairman-dare-not-answer-rm2mil-gaji-question-siva\/"},"modified":"2010-08-23T16:18:31","modified_gmt":"2010-08-23T08:18:31","slug":"felda-chairman-dare-not-answer-rm2mil-gaji-question-siva","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buletinonlines.net\/v7\/index.php\/felda-chairman-dare-not-answer-rm2mil-gaji-question-siva\/","title":{"rendered":"Felda chairman dare not answer RM2mil &#8216;gaji&#8217; question : Siva"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/buletinonline.net\/v7\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/08\/Tan%20Sri%20Dr%20Mohamed%20Yusof%20Mohamed%20Noor.jpg\" border=\"0\" alt=\"http:\/\/buletinonline.net\/images\/stories\/berita31\/Tan%20Sri%20Dr%20Mohamed%20Yusof%20Mohamed%20Noor.jpg\" style=\"float: right;\" \/>A week has passed since PKR vice president Sivarasa Rasiah stunned Felda settlers with the revelation that Felda chairman Mohd Yusuf Nor earned RM2 million a year, more than most settlers would ever make in their lifetime.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI have still not heard from him. We are wondering if he is ever going to give a straight answer. Let me put the challenge to him again, is true that as chairman of Felda and its subsidiaries, Yusuf earns in total as much as RM2 million,\u201d Sivarasa told Malaysia Chronicle.<\/p>\n<p>So far, the Felda chairman has tried to suggest that Siva\u2019s allegations were false, pointing ot that senior officers and the Felda CEO earned far more than him. But he has not answered Siva\u2019s question directly.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHe does not have to make comparisons with the other staff. For now, we are only asking him &#8211; what is his total package? Does it come up to as much as RM2 million \u2013 just give a yes or no. That\u2019s all,\u201d said Siva.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou see, Felda is a public agency and it should behave like the public-listed firms where the best practices and corporate governance should prevail. It is standard procedure for the chairman and board of directors to state their income. It is not a private matter but open to public so that people can judge if there is any wrongdoing or if the amount is unjustified.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Sivarasa is one of the lawyers representing some 766 Felda settlers from Negri Sembilan who are suing the government agency RM200 million for allegedly cheating the settlers when buying their oil palm fruits.<\/p>\n<p>Felda was formed in 1956 to oversee development of rural land for rubber and oil palm planting and to improve the economic status of the landless rural Malay community. It has since grown tremendously and has 811,140 hectares under oil palm, mainly in Malaysia, with operations also in Indonesia.<\/p>\n<p>Of late, public confidence in the agency has suffered after it reported a 67 percent plunge in cash reserves from RM4.08 billion in 2004 to RM1.35 billion in 2009.<\/p>\n<p>Land settlers were not appeased by its explanation on how it spent the cash. According to Ahmad Maslan, the deputy minister overseeing Felda, RM2 billion was spent on replanting crops, while there were also investments in property in Malaysia and overseas.<\/p>\n<p>In particular, Felda\u2019s purchase of a swanky new RM662 million headquarters in Kuala Lumpur caused unhappiness, because the vendor Naza TTDI is known to have strong connections to the Umno elite.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe fear among the settlers is why Felda is spending money on overseas properties and the luxurious HQ. Why doesn\u2019t it use the cash to improve the Felda facilities or for research and technology into high-yielding crops. Are they trying to benefit any cronies?\u201d PAS secretary-general Hatta Ramli told Malaysia Chronicle.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A week has passed since PKR vice president Sivarasa Rasiah stunned Felda settlers with the revelation that Felda chairman Mohd Yusuf Nor earned RM2 million a year, more than most settlers would ever make in their lifetime. \u201cI have still not heard from him. We are wondering if he is ever going to give a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[],"better_featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buletinonlines.net\/v7\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3356"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buletinonlines.net\/v7\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buletinonlines.net\/v7\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buletinonlines.net\/v7\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buletinonlines.net\/v7\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3356"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buletinonlines.net\/v7\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3356\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buletinonlines.net\/v7\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3356"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buletinonlines.net\/v7\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3356"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buletinonlines.net\/v7\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3356"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}