Brew belt chance in cash crunch

Deb in Siliguri on Friday. (Passang Yolmo)

BIRESWAR BANERJEE and AVIJIT SINHA, TT, Siliguri, Nov. 25: Trinamul leaders in north Bengal today said they would hold a series of programmes to protest the delay in wage payment to workers because of the Centre's decision to put a cap on withdrawal of cash from banks.

The aim, party sources said, was to consolidate the Trinamul union's base in the gardens. The target this time, Trinamul leaders said, was not garden owners but the Centre.

Although the party has won in some tea-garden based Assembly seats earlier this year, even today, Trinamul-backed tea trade unions lack widespread support in the brew belt. "We won in four Assembly seats in the tea belt (out of 11). This has happened because the state extended an array of social welfare schemes in tea estates," a Trinamul leader said.

Since November 9, the tea industry has been facing problems in paying fortnightly wages to workers, courtesy the restriction in withdrawal of cash beyond Rs 10,000 a day.

The RBI has come out with a formula for withdrawal of money by garden owners but many estates have said their cash requirement is higher than the maximum limit the formula allows for withdrawal.

Tea workers have hit the streets and protested outside managers' offices in the past two-three days.

With majority of the workforce in financial distress, Trinamul has planned to take up the issue.

Today, state tourism minister Gautam Deb held a meeting with his cabinet colleague James Kuzur and party leaders Mohan Sharma and Sukra Munda at the state guest house here to discuss the issue.

"Because of certain directives of the Reserve Bank of India, tea workers are living amid acute financial crisis as they could not get wages. The Centre's decision of demonetisation has hit these workers hard and they were forced to come out into the streets. The directives are preventing a worker from getting his due payment," Deb said.

"We will launch extensive protests in tea estates and in Siliguri and Calcutta. We have nothing against tea planters," Mohan Sharma, a trade union leader of Trinamul based in Alipurduar, said.

On November 28, Trinamul workers will hold meetings in each tea estate and demonstrate for an hour in the morning.

"On December 2, we will organise a rally from Esplanade in Calcutta and we will walk up to the Tea Board's head office (on Brabourne Road). There, we will hold a sit-in, protesting the Centre's decisions being implemented in the name of RBI," Deb said.

In the course of the meeting, Trinamul leaders also mentioned that opening bank accounts of all tea workers and the formula of wage payment, as advised by the RBI, were impractical.

"It is an improbable task to have bank accounts of all the workers associated with the tea industry immediately. There are permanent and casual workers, who are not acquainted with bank practices. Moreover, banks are located several kilometres away from tea estates and it is a cumbersome job for a worker to visit banks and withdraw cash," the state tourism minister said.

Further, he mentioned, it is unlikely that a worker will be able to join his work the day he or she needs to go to bank.

"This means, he would lose a day's wage and as a whole, it would affect the garden concerned and the industry," Deb said. "Moreover, the tea sector engages temporary workers on the basis of its yield at the plantations. No one can fix the number of workers that a tea estate can engage by coming out with a formula. Such a move, we apprehend, will also affect local employment."

The ruling party in Bengal also plans to convene a central meeting in Siliguri on the first or second week of December.