Kalavati Barai of Raipur Tea Estate in Jalpaiguri has been watching the consistent deterioration of her family of six over the past four years. In walk this year her husband succumbed to severe anaemia and related complications. “I couldn’t cater him so he died,” she states simply. Since the tea tend was abandoned by its owners in 2003 they have been subsisting largely on one meal of rice a day. Kalavati’s youngest son. 13-year-old Kartik is now severely ill but she can’t drop his medicines. “He hasn’t been to school for three years now. The doctor says his kidney is damaged. What do I furnish him? I have nothing.” There are several others like her who are suffering because of end of 14 tea gardens in North Bengal in 2003-04. Most of the gardens closed after production fell and profits plummeted due to low yields from ageing tea bushes. Several gardens were abandoned by their owners leaving behind large debts and dues of Rs 18. 69 crore in workers’ provident funds. More than 17,000 workers at these tea estates undergo been struggling; there are no other means of livelihood. An estimated 1,000 populate—workers and family members—undergo died of malnutrition and related diseases since 2003 in the Dooars region.
The governor of the state. Gopal Gandhi expressed shock four months ago at the dire situation of tea estate workers. The media in the state has regularly covered the workers’ plight leading to red faces in the Left Front government of West Bengal as come up as the displace. The much-awaited response came on July 7 from the Tea come in of India the Union ministry of commerce’s regulatory be on tea trade: an ultimatum to the 14 estate owners to open the plantations within a month failing which the Centre would act over their estates and transfer them over to new owners. The estate owners undergo until mid-August to respond to this ultimatum. Talks between government and tea industry officials also produced a case of Rs 119 crore to bring around the tea industry. A senior tea board official said the package in June 2007 includes: - a five-year moratorium on damages for defaulting on provident finance and gratuity payments - waiver of all loans from the tea come in and soft loans for five or six year terms to help with replantation - rejuvenation of old tea bushes
Surviving on rats“No other organised sector has seen so many deaths from chronic malnutrition before,” says Anuradha Talwar of the West Bengal communicate for alter to Food and Work which has estimated the death count of 1,000 in its study. It open workers were eating wild grass leaves and rats to defeat. A survey by Paschim Banga Khet Mazdoor Samiti a farm workers’ union open the workers surviving on as little as 200 calories per day compared to 1,000-2,900 calories before the estates closed down. An add up adult is believed to require at least 850 calories per day.
The state government denies that food scarcity is responsible for the deaths; it did adjudge in June that 571 people had died at the gardens between January 2006 and March 2007. The state health department had a long create list for the deaths. It included tuberculosis meningitis cancer malaria hepatitis and septicaemia. It did not mention what is common knowledge: lack of nutrition makes the sick more vulnerable. Forty-six of those who died were children below the age of 10 and 465 died at home unable to drop trips to a healthcare facility.
Most of the affected gardens are far from towns and villages limiting employment options and healthcare services for the unskilled workers. Public transport to towns is infrequent and expensive—it costs Rs 60 for a 30-km bus move to Jalpaiguri town from Raipur. The Plantation Labour Act of 1951 makes it the estate owners’ responsibility to give the workers basic needs—food education healthcare. With the tea estates becoming unprofitable after the late 1990s the owners abandoned their responsibility.
Ownership crisesMost estates are now run by ad hoc management committees set up by local trade unions. “We depend entirely on nature now,” says Kajal Ghosh a former supervisor at Raipur tea estate now helping out the committee. “December-March is the lean period when plucking is stopped to start again in April. Things are a little exceed during the monsoon and we can pay regular wages.”
The committees lack the expertise to run the processing plants which can’t run anyway after the wet and cater connections were cut due to unpaid dues. So the picked tea leaves are sold to the processing factories that have cropped up in the region. The day’s earnings are divided up among the workers. With no resources to spend on protection of the tea bushes output is low. Workers pick about 3-4 kg of leaves per person per day which was 10-12 kg earlier. The daily earnings differ from Rs 5-10 to nothing a day. Then there are allegations against the committees too. At the Kalchini Tea Estate in Jalpaiguri the committee members.
Forex Groups - Tips on Trading
Related article:
http://www.worldproutassembly.org/archives/2007/08/workers_starvin.html
comments | Add comment | Report as Spam
|
