Govt panel on tea minimum wage

Avijit Sinha, TT, Siliguri, Oct. 14: State labour minister Malay Ghatak today said the government would soon form a committee of administrative officials and representatives of tea unions and planters to work on fixing a minimum wage for garden workers.

Yesterday, Union minister of state for commerce and industries Nirmala Sitharaman had said she would ask state governments to set a minimum wage in the tea industry.

Speaking to The Telegraph over the phone from Calcutta today, Ghatak said: “The demand for fixing a minimum wage for the tea industry in Bengal had come to our notice some months back. It has been decided that a committee will be constituted by November this year.”

“The committee would comprise representatives of trade unions, planters’ associations and officials of the state labour department. It will hold elaborate discussions on the rate of minimum wage for the tea industry and make necessary recommendations. The government in due course will issue a notification announcing the minimum wage for tea workers. Altogether, it would take around six months as a lot of talks are involved in the process,” he added.

The current daily minimum wage for unskilled agricultural workers in Bengal is Rs 206. Tea workers are regarded as skilled hands.

Trade unions said it was good that the government had finally made a move, but doubted the intention of planters.

“It is good that the state has finally acted on the issue and is going to set up a committee for fixing the minimum wage. However, we think the proposal will face objections from planters who are reluctant to increase the wage,” said Chitta Dey, the convenor of the Co-ordination Committee of Tea Plantation Workers.

A planters’ body said garden owners were not opposed to the minimum wage, but wanted the government to look into other benefits, such as rations and medical facilities, they provided to labourers.

“Let us reiterate that we are not opposed to the introduction of minimum wage in the tea industry. We are simply trying to point out that, added to the daily wage that we pay, the benefits provided in kind under the Plantation Labour Act to workers should also be counted. We have to incur additional expenditure for providing the fringe benefits to the workers,” said Prabir Bhattacharjee, the secretary general of the Tea Association of India.

Sources said the labour department wouldn’t convene another meeting to discuss the revision of daily wage, due since April 1, unless planters revise their decision to offer a hike of Rs 7 a year for three years — an offer that tea unions had rejected.

So far, six rounds of tripartite talks have been held to decide on the wage revision.