Mamata changes tea track

Mamata in Sukna on Wednesday. 

Picture by Kundan Yolmo

BIRESWAR BANERJEE & AVIJIT SINHA, TT, Siliguri, Dec. 30: Chief minister Mamata Banerjee today changed tack on her earlier warning to take over ailing tea gardens and said the central government needed to bring some changes in its policy and rules to resolve the crisis.

"We have done a lot for the tea industry. A package of Rs 100 crore has been made for the industry. It is the central policy and some central rules need to be amended to overcome this crisis in the tea estates.... We have also written to the Centre about it," the chief minister said at Sukna, near Siliguri, that afternoon.

In November, Mamata had issued a warning to tea garden owners that the state government would take over their estates if workers were not paid wages.

"Agar aap log thik se rupiya de sakte ho, to mazdoor ko rupiya do. Thikse sab kuch kar sakta hain, to achcha se chalao. Agar aap nahin kar sakte ho, to hum takeover kar lenge state government (If you can give money to the labourers, then give. If you can run things well, do it. Otherwise, the state government will take over the gardens)," she had said last month in Alipurduar.

But tea gardens are governed by central laws and only the Centre can take over a garden if it is ailing. The state can cancel the land lease, which may make the garden's functioning almost impossible, but it is not the same as a takeover.

The chief minister had arrived here yesterday afternoon after attending two meetings in North and South Dinajpurs. Today, she left for Calcutta via Bagdogra.

Mani Kumar Darnal, the general secretary of the Intuc-backed National Union of Plantation Workers, said: "We had been specifically saying since then that it is the central government which can invoke the Tea Act, 1953, and take over a tea estate. The state can, at best, cancel the land lease as it has done in four tea estates on last year."

He added: "This is what the chief minister said today. As far as her remarks on November 3 are concerned, she either lacked knowledge about the tea act and state's jurisdiction or had said so only to garner votes for her party in the upcoming Assembly polls."

Nirmal Das, a former MLA of the RSP and a leader of Utuc, the party's workers' front, said the chief minister was "passing the buck to the Centre now. If she is aware of the state's limitations in taking over tea estates, why didn't she act earlier?"

Das said it was "clear that the state is insincere in reopening the closed gardens and is hardly bothered about the plight of workers".

Some other trade union leaders have also questioned the 100-crore-package mentioned by the chief minister today.

"It is an old corpus which was formed earlier this year. The act is available in public domain and anybody can see it. Under the act, the state has made provisions which would help tea planters and not tea workers. Planters, who are not paying workers dues and other benefits and are abandoning tea estates, can get loans from this fund," Ziaur Alam, the Jalpaiguri district Citu secretary, said. "Tea workers can only get assistance from the fund if their children are in technical education or studying in polytechnics," he said.

"The chief minister can make elaborate assertions that the state has formed the corpus for tea workers but its provisions speak different words. How can the state confirm that a tea planter, who has abandoned the garden, will utilize the soft loan paid from the fund for workers' development? There are several instances where tea planters have taken loans from banks but have not repaid the money," he said.

Today, Bulu Bhagat, 44, and Shyamlal Kerketta, 40, both workers of Demdima tea estate, owned by G.P. Goenka, died in Alipurduar district. Garden sources said both were suffering from liver problems and other ailments. They were released from hospital a fortnight back.

ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY OUR JALPAIGURI CORRESPONDENT