EVERY time the monsoon season comes, I am reminded of who I am: the son of a rubber tapper.
Towards the end of his life, my father, who died in August this year, would often weep when it rained for days as the fears and sorrows of his rubber-tapping days more than 40 years ago came back to haunt him.
“Arep mangan opo nek udhan terus koyo ngene?” (What are we going to eat if it continues to rain like this?) he would lament in Javanese as tears rolled down his cheeks.
He never complained about how hard life was back then as he struggled to feed and clothe his family when the incessant monsoon rain prevented him from tapping rubber, but the fears never went away. Back then there was no technology to enable rubber tappers like my father to tap rubber on rainy days. If it rained the night before and the bark of the rubber trees became wet, rubber tappers would have to wait until it was dry enough, or the latex would just follow the path of the moisture down the tree trunk.
The New Straits Times carried an article in 2016 extolling the virtues of “rain gutter”, an awning-like contraption strapped to the rubber trees that stops the rainwater from wetting the area to be tapped. Although not the cure-all for rubber tappers’ woes, the rain gutter can increase the number of days that they can go to work during the rainy season.
Another technology that was touted by the Malaysian Rubber Board (MRB) as a possible answer to improve the economic standings of rubber tappers is the low intensity tapping system (LITS). With this system, rubber trees need only be tapped for a few days a week to yield their full potential. The rub tappers can then use the non-tapping days for other economic activities.
However, judging by the negative responses to Primary Industries Minister Theresa Kok’s suggestion that rubber tappers go out to tap rubber on rainy days, the application of such technologies is still the exception rather than the rule. In other words, the majority of our rubber tappers are still using the same methods and technology that my father used 40 years ago.
The slow deployment of new rubber tapping technology is in stark contrast to the advances that the rubber products’ manufacturing industry has gained over the years. A good example is Top Glove Berhad, which has grown to become the world’s number one latex glove manufacturer. The company is expected to announce revenue figures around RM4 billion with profits of about RM400 million for 2017.
As a Malaysian, I am proud of Top Glove’s and other rubber companies’ achievements because they contribute to the nation’s economy but it would be great if a fraction of what the nation earns from the rubber industry is channelled towards disseminating new technologies to the very people feeding their multi-billion ringgit business with raw material.
Perhaps, the Malaysian rubber industry will be able to look after our rubber tappers better if we become world leaders in the production of other rubber-based products besides latex gloves.
Not long ago Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad floated the idea of a third national car project. Proton and Perodua are household names now, providing jobs for thousands of people working in car manufacturing or its supporting industries
We have been making cars for over 30 years and making tyres for longer, but Malaysia is not a world leader in either tyre technology or production. If we become a leader in tyre technology maybe our rubber industry will become stronger and the benefits can be made to trickle down to the rubber tappers.
Despite the popular belief that tyres are made mostly of natural rubber, the tyres manufactured annually around the globe (around two billion of them) have more synthetic rubber made from petroleum products than the milky white latex flowing out of rubber trees. As environment awareness increases, tyre companies are looking into ways of using more natural and sustainable materials.
Japanese tyre manufacturer Bridgestone for example, successfully made their first 100 per cent natural rubber tyre in 2015.
Bridgestone’s milestone should have been music to our ears, as demand for our natural rubber would go up, except for one disturbing detail: the ground-breaking Bridgestone tyre was made entirely from latex harvested from guayule, a shrub native to the arid areas of the United States and Mexico. Bridgestone took only two years to develop the guayule rubber tyre. Their target is to have 100 per cent natural rubber tyres in the market by 2050.
If we don’t take steps to acquire new technologies to diversify our latex usability we will be left behind. More importantly, our long-suffering rubber tappers will tap out long before 2050 if we don’t speed up the dissemination of weather-proof technologies to help them.
SATIMAN JAMIN is an independent journalist based in Kuala Terengganu