State lease plan for own gardens - Dooars Trinamul union opposes move citing irregular wages & closure by private owners

Avijit Sinha, TT, Siliguri, Nov. 9: The state government has decided to lease out its five tea gardens in north Bengal, but the Trinamul-backed union in the Dooars region has opposed the move because workers fear wages may become irregular.

The lease of the five tea estates in north Bengal — three in the hills and two in the plains — to private players will be for 30 years.

The Gorkha Janmukti Morcha-backed union in the three gardens in the Darjeeling hills has not opposed the move.

The five gardens are Rungmook-Cedars, Rangaroon and Pandam estates in the Darjeeling hills, and the Hilla and Mohua tea gardens in the plains. Hilla is in Jalpaiguri district and Mohua in Alipurduar.

The hills and the plains gardens have been bunched into two parcels. Any private investor interested in the lease would have to buy both gardens in the plains or all three in the hills. He can also buy all five gardens, but no single garden would be leased out to any investor.

The lease-out proposal has employment safeguards for the current workers in all the gardens. But the Trinamul-backed Dooars Terai Plantation Workers’ Union has opposed the lease-out, citing a reason that illustrates a huge difference between the estates in the Dooars and the hills.

“We earn wages like any other tea estate worker but we are under the state government and have virtually no wage dues. We have seen several private gardens depriving workers of dues for months and years and are apprehensive of facing similar circumstances if our garden is handed over to private entrepreneurs,” said Durga Mahali, the unit secretary of the Dooars Terai Plantation Workers’ Union in Hilla.

Harka Bahadur Bhujel, the unit secretary of Dooars Terai Plantation Workers’ Union in Mohua, said that after December 17, the deadline for the tenders, the workers “will have no option but to launch movement” if the government sticks to its plan.

The Dheklapara tea estate in Alipurduar has been shut since 2005 after its owner tried to run the garden for a few months but failed. The owner of the Raipur tea garden in Jalpaiguri district has not cleared the wage arrears of workers since taking over the garden in July this year.

Gardens in the hills, which produce Darjeeling Tea that fetches a much higher price than the CTC leaves produced in the Dooars, do not face wage problems that plains union leaders cited. In recent years, no hill garden has been shut down.

A tea planter in Siliguri said: “It could be easy to revive the three gardens in the hills as these estates will produce orthodox Darjeeling Tea…. On the other hand, the gardens in the Dooars produce CTC tea and there is a huge competition in the CTC market. It would take some time for the company to build its market and sell tea at prices enough to revive Hilla and Mohua. The workers in Dooars understand this which is why, they seem to be worried.”

“Also, there are instances in the Dooars where a new owner, after taking over a garden, has closed it again as he could not sustain the business. Workers in Mohua, who are getting regular wages (from the state) despite the garden running at a loss, have seen such cases,” he added.

The West Bengal Tea Development Corporation (WBTDC) runs the five gardens. The WBTDC was formed in 1976 when the state acquired and tried to revive the ailing five tea estates. But over the years, the yields of these estates shrank, both in Darjeeling and the Dooars.

The officials and the workers of these gardens are paid by the state government. The workers’ wage rate is the same as those in privately-owned gardens.

The state’s lease-out proposal mentioned that the companies taking over the gardens should have five years’ experience in the tea industry and “will have to employ the existing workforce, subject to the consent of such employee on terms and conditions not less favourable than terms of their present engagement”.

In Darjeeling, Suraj Subba, the general secretary of the Morcha-backed Darjeeling Terai Dooars Plantation Labour Union, said: “We are not going to oppose the move of selling these three gardens to private companies,” but sought a written assurance that no worker would lose his job.” ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY OUR ALIPURDUAR CORRESPONDENT