Rs 100 crore for stressed gardens

TNN | Nov 7, 2015, KOLKATA: In the wake of tea garden workers' death in Dooars, a group of ministers (GoM) formed by chief minister Mamata Banerjee has decided to extend a series of sops in the areas of food, health, power and education for the employees of not only closed or abandoned tea gardens but also of the stressed ones. 

The GoM has decided to allocate a Rs 100-crore Tea Garden Employees' Welfare Fund (formed in early 2015) as corpus for the benefit of the ailing tea garden workers. The GoM headed by finance and industries minister Amit Mitra had an hourlong meeting with the officials of education, food, health, PHE and power departments on Friday to discuss the strategy and modalities to stop starvation death in Dooars. 

The other members of GoM also include power minister Manish Gupta, rural development minister Subrata Mukherjee, education minister Partha Chatterjee, north Bengal development minister Gautam Deb, labour minister Maloy Ghatak and agriculture minister Purnendu Bose. 

It was decided that a task force will be formed under the district magistrates of Jalpaiguri and Alipurduar to oversee the implementation of the relief measures on a day-to-day basis. The state government has set a deadline of seven days to supply power directly to the workers houses in all the 234 Dooars gardens. 

Besides free power, the state is organizing a free kitchen in over 30 stressed gardens in Dooars. "Over 1.48 lakh workers of these ailing gardens will be benefited from this. The DM of the respective district will oversee the free kitchen," a member added. On the health front, it was decided that new public health centres will be set up and two mobile medical vans will visit the tea gardens every week. 

Moreover, the workers of all the 28 closed gardens will get Rs 1,500 as monthly stipend as per industrial act. 

The tea industry has welcomed the government move.