Green Death Zones Of Tea

Green Death Zones Of Tea

Indian Holocaust My Father`s Life and time -Two Hundred Twenty Six

Palash Biswas



Closed tea gardens spell doom for Bengal's tea labourers. A court inquiry in India has found 700 former tea workers have died from diseases linked to malnutrition over the past year.The deaths resulted from a combination of starvation, malnutrition, general debility and diseases among workers in the abandoned tea gardens in North Bengal.Investigations by the Supreme Court found poor production and low yields led to the closure of 16 tea gardens in a remote part of West Bengal state.Many workers lost their jobs and were left with no income to survive.

Experts say the deaths have stood out in a unionised sector like tea, where workers were given electricity, water, food as part of their emoluments.While millions of Indians live in poverty, jobs in unionised sectors like tea are normally prized for the stability they offer workers.

India, the world's largest producer of tea, has had state regulations to protect formal workers for decades and unions are strong.But in this case, union protection appears to have collapsed.More than 15,000 workers in West Bengal have been struggling to survive without any alternative means of livelihood and depending on rats, wild plants and flowers for food.
"It was appalling to find how the world's largest tea producer treats its workers," Talwar, who is due to submit her report to the Supreme Court, said in Kolkata.

In many tea plantations in West Bengal, employers did not pay wages owed to workers following the shutdown, Talwar and tea workers' associations said.

A spokesman for the Tea Board, the umbrella organisation for tea companies, said an internal report on the situation had been sent to the government, but said the board could make no further comment because the matter was pending in courts.

The government wants the plantations to reopen.

At least 150 people have died of malnutrition in West Bengal in the past year after the closure of scores of tea plantations in what investigators say is a unique case of social breakdown in a heavily unionised sector.Hundreds more are starving.Ailing tea gardens have created a large and unemployed workforce. The government, however, denied that workers are dying of hunger in these gardens. On the other hand, The Tea Board is planning to tie up with the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) for mapping the tea gardens for better monitoring of the industry and its natural resources.

Referring to reports in the media of plantation workers and their family members dying of malnutrition, District Magistrate of Jalpaiguri R Ranjit said, “These are old reports. There have been 571 deaths in the last 15 months and the total population of the 14 closed tea gardens is 75,000. This is a death rate of 6.4 per 1000 people. The rate for West Bengal as a state, on the other hand, is 8 per 1000.” The DM said regular camps are being organized in the district for health check-ups and mid-day meals are also being provided.

India's tea industry has been suffering since 1999, with growers now fetching much lower prices for tea leaves, while production costs have been soaring. Tea Association of India says overseas competition has contribruted to the problem.Tea industry sources said the efforts might not bear much fruit as tea gardens need to increase production and cut down on cost of employment, which is not possible. How long can the NREGA sustain such a big workforce, they wonder. “We need to look at the scope of diversification in tea gardens, and try to introduce new crops, keeping 51 per cent of the land under tea cultivation. However, that is not possible as land ceiling laws in the state will not permit more than 5 per cent of land to be used for such purposes,” said an industry expert. Director of Tea Development (DTD), Tea Board of India, G Boriah, was optimistic about the government’s plans. “Sincere entrepreneurs can avail subsidies and financial benefits provided by the government and banks and run the gardens profitably,” he said.

It is claimed taht Tea Board approaches close to re-opening four gardens in July. The Tea Board is in an advanced stage of re-opening four more gardens in West Bengal for which talks were currently on with intending owners and bankers, its chairman Basudeb Banerjee said. Banerjee told reporters that regular meetings were being held and one had been slated for Monday. "We hope to re-open four more tea gardens in July," he said.

Out of the 33 closed tea gardens across the country, 14 were located in West Bengal.

The first closed tea garden to re-open was Surendranagar Tea Estate on May 17.

Asked by which time Tea Board would be able to re-open all the closed tea gardens in the state, Banerjee said it was not possible to give a date since there were a few court cases involved in some of the gardens.

"But we are trying our best," Banerjee.

Total area under hectarage in the 14 gardens was 6500, involving 12,000 families.

Banerjee said that close co-operation from the West Bengal government was also required for re-opening of the closed gardens.

Meanwhile, the centre was in the process of preparing a relief package for re-opening of the closed gardens.

While the package had been finalised by the Commerce Ministry, it was awaiting approval of the Cabinet, Banerjee said.

The package would include rescheduling of loans by banks, sanction of working capital and interest subsidy, issue of fresh terms loans and waiver of tea board dues and penalties.

As per rough calculation, the banks would have to make a sacrifice of Rs 80 crore over the next five years, while the burden on the government would be Rs 58 crore during the same period.

Tea board had also made conditional that new owners of closed tea gardens would have to make significant investments in modernisation.

Ageing of bushes was one of the main reasons for gardens Closing.



"The Government may portray the deaths their way," said Anuradha Talwar, a Supreme Court adviser, who compiled a report about the deaths.

"But the fact remains that workers have starved to death, and many are waiting to die," she said.

Many were suffering from tuberculosis and night blindness.

India, the world's largest producer and consumer of tea, has strong regulations to protect workers' rights and powerful unions often guarantee free electricity, water and food as part of their salary packages.

But unions say that estate owners did not pay wages and other arrears owed following the shutdown.

They are now fighting for compensation.

Organisations representing the tea producers say they plan to reopen the estates under a cooperative plan.

Hundreds of former tea workers are being forced to travel across the border to Bhutan to work in the tiny nation's growing stone crushing and mineral factories.

Most earn less than $2 a day in the factories.

Those who stayed back -- starving and weak, are being forced to forage for food in nearby forests to keep themselves and their children alive.

Surviving on bitter gourd fruit for weeks, Molly Kajur, 30, can barely get up to feed her three starving children.

"It tastes bad and very bitter," she said, barely able to speak.

"But this is the only way to keep me and my children alive."


Sources said that monitoring had become critical for the regulatory body, especially in view of the massive re-plantation exercise that is being taken up. It involves activity over 2.12 lakh hectares out of the 5.26 lakh hectares under tea cultivation in Assam, Dooars and Darjeeling in West Bengal, and Kerala and Tamil Nadu in the south. A small quantity of a speciality tea is also grown in the Kangra Valley in Himachal Pradesh. Initial meetings on the project entitled Tea Area Development and Management, using remote sensing and geographical indication systems (GIS), have already been held with the faculty of IIT Kharagpur, which runs the regional remote sensing centre (RRSC). A core group, which would be formed after a final round of meeting with ISRO, would work out the modalities and the finer points, sources said. The project would involve the participation of officials of the Tea Board, the Tea Research Association, the industry and the RRSC. The project will be funded under the 11th Five-Year Plan, which commenced in April 2007. The mapping, to be done through the GIS, will generate garden-wise data on the actual extent of area under tea cultivation and also their location. It will also throw up data on the extent of area available either for new plantation or for alternative cropping. The profile of the resident population will also be known and village resource centres are planned to be set up accordingly. Water resources, rivers around a garden and their drainage systems will also be known.

The exercise is expected to establish a connectivity with each garden to gather information about the physical progress made under the various development schemes of the Board.


AT least 700 Indian tea workers have died from diseases linked with malnutrition over the past year after the closure of tea estates left them with no income.And hundreds more are still starving, a court inquiry has found. Two years ago, poor production and low yields led to the closure of 16 tea estates in Jalpaiguri, a remote part of West Bengal, leaving plantation workers with no income. Investigations by the Supreme Court and tea workers' associations found this had directly led to the deaths and had left hundreds more unable to feed themselves. But the Government says the deaths are unrelated to starvation. In a bid to share the problems of workers at sick and closed tea gardens, the state government has decided to bring them under the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA). Earlier, this Act was not applicable to a tea garden since it did not come under panchayats.


DEATH ZONE
Poverty and hunger can never cause deaths in Left-ruled Bengal. It is not easy to decide which one is more shocking — the unending deaths of workers and their family members in Jalpaiguri’s closed tea gardens or the state government’s shameless attempt to pass them off as ‘natural’ deaths. The poor and the hungry would naturally die if no succour is provided to them. It is also natural that they would suffer from malnutrition and diseases before they actually die. It is thus both absurd and revolting that the government sees nothing unnatural in the deaths. The official line reflects the cynical politics that surrounds such deaths in India. When farmers in other parts of the country are driven to death by debt or hunger, the Leftists are the most vocal of politicians about those ‘starvation deaths’. On their own turf, it is a different story — not even the poorest can starve to death. The danger in this approach is that it seeks to underplay the government’s failure to prevent these deaths. Worse still, such a callous government would do little to improve things at Jalpaiguri’s death zone.

Yet, only recently the government almost pleaded guilty over the deaths in north Bengal’s tea gardens. The picture that the governor, Gopalkrishna Gandhi, painted of the conditions there during a visit to a tea garden also led him to make a loud and strong condemnation of the State’s inaction. The number of deaths — 571 in 15 months — makes a cruel mockery of the promises that the finance minister, Asim Dasgupta, had made to the tea-workers sometime back. The most shocking aspect of the tragedy is the government’s blatant attempt to gloss over its failures. The government and political parties seem to know of just one use of the poor tea-garden workers, the majority of whom belong to tribal communities. They serve only as vote-banks.

However, short-term welfare measures may not be the answer to a problem that is essentially economic. For far too long, tea gardens have been run, not as business ventures, but almost as social security programmes. The techniques of production are outdated at most of the gardens. The owners have invested little towards modern production or managerial methods. To make matters worse, the industry has been burdened with social responsibilities that should have been with the government. True, the Centre and the state government have recently been forced to take note of the alarming situation at the tea gardens. The Union minister of state for commerce, Jairam Ramesh, has provided some ideas for reviving Bengal’s tea industry. But it is time New Delhi and Calcutta realized that the industry could no longer be run the way the British planters ran it. Hunger and deaths will continue to stalk the tea gardens until the industry reforms itself.
http://www.telegraphindia.com/1070608/asp/opinion/story_7891152.asp

Promises made, only to be broken

Three months after Asim Dasgupta went around some of the ailing Dooars tea gardens and rolled out promises aplenty, it is time for a progress report.The finance minister had sanctioned Rs 16 crore to the district administration on April 3. With the funds for the quarter ending June came the promise of doctors for every tea estate, a slew of financial schemes and alternative means of livelihood.

“Health staff attached to the gardens before they closed down will also be recalled to ensure better healthcare,” the minister said.

But even after 571 deaths, the picture remains the same.

“Only two doctors responded to our ad and agreed to work on contract,” said Banamali Roy, the sabhadhipati of Jalpaiguri zilla parishad. “We have appointed them to Kalchini and Bharnobari gardens.”

Even a second ad failed to attract doctors to the hunger death zone. “Not only that, no health worker who had served in the gardens earlier, turned up,” said Bhusan Chakraborty, the chief medical officer of health, Jalpaiguri.

Many workers of the closed estates had not taken Dasgupta seriously. “We never expected it to happen. There was a mobile van earlier that used to carry patients. For the past two-three months, that service, too, has been discontinued,” said Gopal Das of Sikarpur and Bhandapur Tea Estate.

But there were many oth- ers, like Biplab Sarkar of Bharnobari, who pinned their hopes on the minister’s promi- ses. Sarkar said a health sub- centre has come up in his garden. “But there are usually no medicines there.”

Sania Bhumij, a leader of the Citu-affiliated Cha Bagan Mazdoor Union at Raipur Tea Estate, said the mobile medical team is more frequent now. “But we still don’t have an ambulance in our garden to carry patients to Jalpaiguri, 10 km away.”

Some of Dasgupta’s other promises include agriculture or multi-cropping on 2,200 acres of unused land in the estates. “We had sent a proposal to start cultivation of pulses, black gram, corn and paddy on 800 acres,” said Sarthak Burma, the north Bengal additional director of agriculture. “It hasn’t been sanctioned.”

Distribution of foodgrain and monetary relief has started, though. Labour officials monitoring the Financial Assistance to Workers of Locked- out Industries Scheme said all 13 gardens have been included in the list.

The district administration has completed a housewise survey that was part of the study to find the number of deaths in the gardens.


Bengal’s death harvest
AVIJIT SINHA

Siliguri, June 5: At least one person dies every day in Jalpaiguri’s closed tea gardens where workers have been battling poverty and hopelessness for the past five years.The state government has for the first time admitted the humanitarian crisis, overshadowed by the Singur-Nandigram land wars and West Midnapore starvation scandals.

But the government refuses to admit either starvation or “malnutrition” — the euphemism it uses in West Midnapore — in the gardens where, unofficial reports say, at least 3,000 have died since the 2002 closure spree.

A survey in April across the 14 closed gardens (Surendranagar has reopened since then) found that 571 people had died in the 15 months ending March 31 this year. Of them, 409 were below 60, the national average life span.

But the chief medical officer of health (Jalpaiguri), Bhusan Chakraborty, steered clear of the word “malnutrition”. He cited a host of reasons for the deaths: over 250 had died of heart diseases and stroke, and scores of others from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, cirrhosis of liver, hepatitis, TB, high fever, meningitis, malaria, cancer and septicaemia.

But doctors said many of these can be brought on by starvation or aggravated to the point where they can lead to death.

“Malnutrition lowers immunity; the body loses its efficiency in fighting infections. Studies have revealed that malnutrition is a big factor in TB,” said Dr Milan Chhetri of Apollo Gleneagles Hospital, Calcutta.

Some of the findings left Sharmishtha Biswas, coordinator of Uttaron, a workers’ facilitation centre at Birpara that analysed the figures, “astounded”.

The dead include 46 under-10 children — three every month. “Some 465 people — 80 per cent of the total — died at home and only 106 in hospitals and health centres or on the way to hospitals,” one of the analysts said.

Workers said they couldn’t afford the long journey to hospitals and the ambulance service was non-functional. Only three of Kanthalguri’s 53 went to hospitals. At Bhornabari, all 79 died in their homes.

Anuradha Talwar, adviser to the food commissioner of the Supreme Court, has received a copy of the survey results. She said from Calcutta she would take it up with the Centre and the state.

During a visit to one of the closed gardens, Ramjhora, in March this year, governor Gopalkrishna Gandhi was appalled at the poverty and squalor he saw. Gandhi had told junior PWD minister Manohar Tirkey he just had to look at the sick children to find proof of malnutrition.

Some 17,000 labourers are jobless in the 13 gardens. The closures began in 1998 with a slump in tea prices. Some gardens reopened but in 2002, about 30 shut down again. In 2003, reports of starvation deaths started coming in.


Key role for tea women

An international workers’ forum has suggested a more active role for women leaders to end the problems in the closed tea estates of the Dooars.Representatives of IUF met trade union leaders from the brew belt in Calcutta last week to discuss the situation in the closed gardens. The Geneva-based International Union of Food, Agriculture, Hotel, Restaurant, Catering, Tobacco, Plantation and Allied Workers’ Associations works to unite food, farm and hotel workers worldwide.

“We want to take a fresh approach to try and end the workers’ problems. This includes empowerment of women who form more than 80 per cent of the total workforce,” Sujata Gothoskar, the agriculture and plantation coordinator of IUF in India, said over phone from Mumbai.

Describing women as “more sensitive” than men, Gothoskar said: “If they are made leaders or office bearers in trade unions, they will be more effective in organising movements on issues affecting their daily lives, like workload, occupational safety, malnutrition, drinking water supply and medical facilities.”

Su Long Ley, the international coordinator of agriculture and plantation at IUF, and Jasper Goss, the information officer for IUF in the Asia-Pacific region, were present at the meeting in Calcutta.

“We also discussed the need to raise the issue at international platforms like the ILO,” Gothoskar said.

Chitta Dey, the convener of the Coordination Committee of Tea Plantation Workers who attended the meeting, made a strong case for the formation of workers’ cooperatives to restart the closed gardens.

In December 2003, Paschim Banga Khet Mazdoor Samiti, an IUF-affiliate, and the international union had conducted a survey on health, food, drinking water and living quarters of workers in the tea gardens of north Bengal and found the situation alarming.

Anuradha Talwar, a member of the samiti and an adviser to the food commissioners of the Supreme Court, had submitted the report to the apex legal body, which asked the Bengal government to respond within 10 days and take appropriate action.

In response, the state government intensified the promotion of welfare schemes and provision of medical facilities in the gardens and included every workers’ family in the BPL category.

Gothoskar said another survey might be conducted to find out the current situation in the Dooars gardens.



"We are working on a plan to reopen the gardens by getting the employees to form a cooperative," Jairam Ramesh, junior commerce minister said from New Delhi.

"I have heard about reports of starvation deaths in tea gardens of West Bengal, but right now our focus is to find a solution to reopen the gardens," Ramesh said on Wednesday.

Medical reports and death certificates of many dead workers show severe malnutrition and anaemia, Talwar said.

"I will drink water, but I am not sure what I will feed my three children," Talwar quoted Phulmani Kharia, a 25-year-old woman in Varnavari, 660 km north of Kolkata as saying.

Cabinet nod likely for revival of tea gardens

KOLKATA: Cabinet nod for a revival package for the 33 tea gardens closed in Kerala, West Bengal and Assam is likely within 45 days, Union Minister of State for Commerce Jairam Ramesh said here on Friday.

Addressing journalists after a meeting of stakeholders in these tea gardens in West Bengal, the Minister said that 11 of the gardens would be reopened in Kerala by May 27, while in West Bengal the process would be kicked off with the reopening of one by May 17, followed by two more by June 29. About 3,806 employees were employed in these gardens. He was hopeful of reopening another two by July. A total of 35,000 workers and over a lakh people were affected by the closure of these gardens. Of the 33 gardens, 17 are in Kerala, 14 in West Bengal and two in Assam. The Minister said that while low productivity levels were among the prime reasons behind the closures, more important was the issue of owners' insensitivity.

The first such garden, Bonacard in Kerala, owned by Mahabir Plantations, reopened on April 6, 2007 following rounds of consultations with the stakeholders initiated by Mr. Ramesh. The gardens to be reopened in Kerala include nine owned by Ram Bahadur Thakur and two more owned by Peermade Tea Company.

Referring to the relief package now being examined by the Government, Mr. Ramesh said the total financial implication, spread over five years, was Rs. 58 crore for the Centre and Rs. 80 crores for the banking system. The package included rescheduling of loans, fresh term loans at subsidised interest, wavier of Tea Board's dues and penalties of the Employees Provident Fund Organisation.

Situation of Tea Garden workers in Bengal

Fact - Finding Report of Centre for Education and Communication (CEC), New Delhi and United Trades Union Congress

Pipli Mahali, 34, was a permanent worker in Mujnai TE living with her husband Mani Mahali and a two and a half year-old son. However, she found it difficult to manage the household after the crisis in the tea estate began. Her husband was suffering from tuberculosis but, as the hospital was not equipped with any medicine, he died a slow death in early 2002. When the employers abandoned the tea estate in November, 2002, there was no foodstuff available in the estate at all. Hence, Pipli was forced to feed her son whatever fruits and vegetables were available in the nearby jungles. Unable to digest these wild fruits, her son succumbed to blood dysentery in November, 2002. Pipli now lives alone in a house and has sold off all her belongings in order to survive. She is suffering from tuberculosis and very few people visit her at home. She is helplessly awaiting her death.

Based on many such reports on deaths, starvation, wage cuts, fall in tea prices and closure of tea plantations in West Bengal, Centre for Education and Communication (CEC), New Delhi and United Trades Union Congress took the initiative in organising a Fact Finding Team to visit tea plantations in those states for an on the spot investigation.

Key Observations made in the Fact Finding Report from Kerala and Tamil Nadu

The Fact Finding Report Stress that there is a serious crisis in the tea industry of West Bengal. The major manifestations of the crisis are:

Closures and abandonment of the tea estates by the management

In the Dooars region of West Bengal, there are more than 19 tea plantations, which have been closed or abandoned by the owners. These tea estates include Rahimabad, Kathalguri, Ramjhora, Dheklapara, Mujnai, Srinathpur, Pathorjhara, Carron, Chamurchi, Dima, Kalchini, Raimatang, Peshok, Vettakver, Looksan, Sepoydhoorah, Shimulabari, Samsing and Putang. The senior managers have deserted these plantations. The closures have affected nearly 30,000 workers along with their families in these plantations.

Deaths due to Starvation and Drinking Contaminated Water

The tea plantations of the Dooars region have witnessed an abnormal numbers of deaths. More than 240 people have died in only four plantations between March 2002 to February 2003 in the Terai and Dooars regions. These tea plantations are Ramjhara T.E., Kathalguri T.E., Dheklapara T.E. and Mujnai T.E., where most of the workers are dying due to blood dysentery, liver cirrhosis, anaemia and cardio respiratory failure. An analysis of the death registers revealed that the death rates significantly increased after the closure of the tea plantations. The children and the aged constitute the largest number of the dead but many young workers were also dying. The number of female deaths in the age group of 16-35 is higher than the males because of a large number of deaths during childbirth.

Non-Availability of Food and Starving Workers

In West Bengal the management provides concessional foodstuff as part of the workers wages. However, after the closure or abandoning of the tea plantations, there was absolutely no food available for the workers. Some workers survived by selling their household items and by crushing stones, but many of them are starving and consequently suffering from acute malnutrition. The condition of the aged, women children and the ailing is the worst. In order to survive, some of the workers consumed any food that was available and cheap, resulting in chronic under nourishment or food poisoning and slow death.

Complete Absence of Drinking Water

As the electricity supply to the closed or abandoned tea estates has been disconnected, drinking water, which was supplied by the management to the worker households from common water tanks, has been completely stopped. Most of the workers fetched drinking water from the streams in the hilly areas of Bhutan. These streams are polluted because of the presence of dolomite - waste from the cement factories in Bhutan. The same source of water is also being used by the workers to cremate their dead. A sample of water that was being consumed by the workers in Kathalguri T.E. was sent by the Fact Finding Team to Quality Laboratory, New Delhi, (approved by the Department of Epidemiology, Government of India). The report found the water highly contaminated and unfit for drinking.

Non-Functional Estate Hospitals

In almost all the closed or abandoned tea plantations, the estate hospitals have closed down after the doctors left the estates. A few hospitals, which are still run by the compounders, have no medicines. There are no ambulances available to take the seriously ill or injured workers for advanced medical care to the city hospitals. Most of the people who were dying in these tea plantations could have been saved if the estate hospitals were functioning normally. There are many cases of women workers dying during childbirth. There is hardly any medicine left at the estate hospital and the inexperienced nurses are attending complicated delivery cases using kerosene lamps as the electricity connections have been cut off. In some plantations, there are ambulances, but are stationary, as there is no fuel available.

The Women Workers Suffer Most

The permanent workers in the tea plantations of West Bengal are mostly women, because they usually do most of the plucking work. As the main wage earners, women workers are under tremendous pressure. They are restricted by a lack of skills from joining other income earning activities, an absence of alternate employment opportunities and unfavourable conditions for migrating long distances in search of alternate opportunities of work. The Fact Finding Team came across many households where only the woman worker was staying at the tea plantations. They could not leave the security of the line room, which was allotted, to them and where they had been staying for generations. Many women workers had died due to pregnancy related complications. Some fortunate women had been shifted to the city hospital in a lorry when the workers pooled in money to help them out, but such cases were rare.

Condition of the Children

Most of the children in the tea plantations of the Dooars and Terai regions stopped going to school. Instead they were cooking food and carrying it for their parents who were crushing stones in the dry riverbeds. The Fact Finding Team also witnessed many children crushing stones along side their parents to augment the family income.

Non-Payment of Wages

The wages of the tea plantation workers of West Bengal are the lowest in the organised sector. The workers barely manage to survive with the paltry daily wages of Rs. 49.25 in West Bengal, which is lower than Rs. 65.88 in Assam (The tea garden workers in Assam and West Bengal receive concessional foodstuff as part of their wages) and much lower than the tea workers’ daily wages in Kerala, Rs. 76.17 and Rs. 72.62 in Tamil Nadu. These low wages prevail in spite of the fact that labour productivity in West Bengal is one of the highest in the country and so is the land yield and overall price of tea. However, due to the closure of the tea plantations, the workers have been deprived of even the low wages they were receiving. The Fact Finding Team found on their to visit the tea plantations, that the period for which workers had not received their wages in the above-mentioned 19 plantations varied between three to 10 months. In Mujnai T.E., workers had not received wages from April 24, 2002. Similarly, in Ramjhora T.E. workers had not been paid wages from August 10, 2002 and workers have not received their wages in Dheklapara T.E. from August 21, 2002 and in Kathalguri T.E. from July 22, 2002. It was reported that in the same region there were more than 15 other tea estates, which had not closed down, but were not paying regular wages or other benefits to the workers. The workers were surviving in West Bengal by crushing stones deposited in the dry riverbeds despite the fact that the total family earning of a worker through crushing stones was between Rs. 15 to 20 per day. Moreover, the stone crushing work was not available throughout the week.

Mounting Provident Fund and Gratuity Dues

All the 19 tea estates mentioned above had not deposited provident fund contributions for months now. They had also not paid gratuity to many workers. Anjuman Tea Company, which owns Mujnai T.E., owes Rs.55,46,498 as Employees Provident Fund (EPF) dues for February, 2002 to October, 2002 and Rs.15,01,829 for non-payment of gratuity from March, 2002. Similarly, in Ramjhora T.E. the company’s provident fund dues had gone up to Rs. 68,30,667 and it also owed Rs.13,85,147 in terms of gratuity. There are more than 15 tea plantations, which were still functioning but had defaulted in depositing the workers’ provident fund contributions.

Growing Unemployment in the Tea Estates

Thousands of workers were rendered jobless because of the closure of the tea estates. In some of the functional tea plantations, the managements proposed reduced days of work and not employing temporary workers.
The major factors behind the Crisis
* The Report stress that there is evidence of cartelisation in the tea auctions due to dominance of big corporations in the tea trade. The Report by International management consultant, A.F. Ferguson & Co about tea auctions on behalf of the Tea Board of India in 2002 severely criticised the existing rules.
* It has been also stressed that the average tea prices in the retail market is around Rs. 140/- per Kg while in the auctions it is less than Rs. 48 per kg.