In hills, TMC feels the need to be seen - Party changes strike venue to tourist hub in rare protest for tea workers

Vivek Chhetri, TT, Darjeeling, July 19: The ruling Trinamul, which never had a problem with public visibility after coming to power, today shifted a hunger strike venue in Darjeeling from a tea association office to a taxi stand as it wanted to be seen.

N.B. Khawash, the general secretary of Trinamul (hills), today said: "We have decided to shift the venue from the DTA (Darjeeling Tea Association) office to the Upper Clubside as the hunger strike would not be visible on the office promises."

Trinamul has been alleging that workers in the Pussimbing tea garden were being forced to work more than eight hours a day and were being denied paid holidays if it fell on Sunday. The Darjeeling Zilla Team Employees and Workers' Union, backed by Trinamul, also alleged that the management stopped the practice of giving three days off to labourers to construct toilets.

The Trinamul union started a hunger strike in the garden over these demands, after which the management halted work which is yet to resume.

In the 87 tea gardens in the hills, the dominant unions are of the Gorkha Janmukti Morcha. Pussimbing is one of the few hill gardens where Trinamul has managed to get some supporters. The urgency to gain visibility is also linked to the party's failure to make inroads into tea unions in the Darjeeling hills and the Dooars and Terai.

All of last year, when other garden unions were crying for a minimum industrial wage and a better tripartite wage agreement, Trinamul sat out. The Joint Forum, a conglomeration of Dooars garden unions, and the hill unions were able to extract a promise from central minister Nirmala Sitharaman that the industrial wage issue would be expedited.

Garden workers in Darjeeling and the Dooars, mostly tribals, make up a sizeable chunk of voters. Of the five Assembly seats in the Dooars, Trinamul has only one - ironically held by Wilson Champramari who is in the thick of a sandalwood smuggling case.

In the hills, all three MLAs are from the Morcha. With Assembly elections about a year away, the Dooars and the hills are two areas where the ruling party has been unable to gain the kind of political foothold that it has managed in once impenetrable CPM dens such as Burdwan.

The Darjeeling Zilla Team Employees and Workers' Union had on Friday said they would hold the relay hunger strike at the DTA office from Sunday till July 24. The deputy labour commissioner has called a meeting on July 24 to solve the impasse.

Today at 11am, five Trinamul supporters started the hunger strike at Upper Clubside, near the popular eating joint Keventer's. The DTA office in Planter's Club is about 200 meters away.

The garden management's representative said after last week's meeting that unless the Trinamul union withdrew its demands, it would not be possible to start work. The Morcha union has not supported Trinamul's demand.