Three die in closed Kanthalguri estate

TT, May 26: Three workers died in the closed Kanthalguri tea garden in the Dooars in the last two days and a fourth one is in hospital.

The garden has been shut since May 14 because of labour unrest over lower wages. Labour union leaders said lack of food was the cause for the deaths.

Union leaders said ever since the closure, the workers and their families had been subsisting on a single meal a day.

The estate at Banarhat in Jalpaiguri district was dubbed the “garden of death” as around 300 garden people died there between 2002 and 2007.

Ganju Oraon, 40, died on Friday. Yesterday, Bippa Oraon, 55, and Simani Oraon, 22, breathed their last.

All three were garden hands and died while they were being taken to hospitalAnother worker, Ranjit Oraon, is under treatment at North Bengal Medical College and Hospital. No doctor at the hospital was available to speak on Ranjit’s condition. The medical superintendent, whom Metro contacted, said he was out of station and would not be able to speak on Ranjit’s condition.

“Three workers, including a relative of mine, have died in the past two days because of lack of adequate food and treatment. The garden was in the grip of abject poverty between 2002 and 2010 and we had seen several deaths then,” said Bachchan Oraon, a worker.

Kanthalguri, under a new management of Calcutta-based Airon Infrastructure Ltd, reopened on June 2, 2010, after almost eight years.

“When the new owner took over the estate, 1,149 of the 1,478 permanent labourers were assigned work. The remaining people eke out a living by working as daily-wage labourers, crushing stones on the bank of Reti-Sukriti river,” said Chandrakant Jha, a worker.

“The Centre’s 100-day work scheme was launched in the plantation, but it was discontinued a few months back for some unknown reasons,” Jha added.

Trade union leaders said although the daily wage of a garden worker had been raised to Rs 95, labourers in Kanthalguri still received Rs 65 only. The management cited financial problems for offering lower wages.

“Besides, workers were getting jobs for 12-15 days, instead of 22 days a month. With such a low income, most of the families only eat one meal a day,” said Maheshwar Mahali, a leader of the Kanthalguri unit of the Progressive Tea Workers’ Union.

“The garden hospital is shut and there is no ambulance service either. The sole help was the irregular visit of government health workers,” said Mahali.

The workers, he said, were leading an impoverished life after the garden’s closure on on May 14 and several took ill.

“They fall ill because of lack of food and medicine. Without money, the workers can’t go to hospitals. Even though the garden has closed around a fortnight ago, not a single grain has been distributed by the administration or panchayats,” Mahali said.

Soumendu Bhutraj, the block development officer of Dhupguri, said he had received no information about the three deaths in Kanthalguri. “Now that I have come to know about the matter, I will send a medical team to the garden tomorrow. Further, if a request is sent to me from Chamurchi panchayat (under which Kanthalguri is located), we will immediately arrange for food grain,” he said.

Ruth Pariyar, the pradhan of Chamurchi, said she would send details of the workers’ deaths to the BDO tomorrow.