Relief eludes garden & factories - Estate finds a path to worker payment

TT, Alipurduar, Nov. 29: A tea garden in Alipurduar, where workers' wages are pending since November 15, has worked a way out for cash payments using the bank accounts of some employees.

While the process is an instance of collaboration by the garden, the bank and political leaders to address workers' woes, it will still not sort out the pay problem for Majherdabri tea estate entirely.

At the crux of the problem is a permission that the Bank of India branch in Alipuduar has not received from senior officials of the bank to release funds to the Majherdabri management under a pay formula given by the RBI.

The RBI's formula takes into consideration the number of hectares of plantation area, the concentration of workers per hectare and the fortnightly wage. The bank in which the garden has an account has to take permission from higher officials to disburse cash according to the formula.

Today, around 500 workers of Majherdabri swarmed the Bank of India branch, demanding wage payment in cash.

With police intervention, many of the workers were removed from the bank building as work had completely come to a stop and customers who had come to withdraw new currency notes were stranded.

Later, the intervention of Trinamul MLA Sourav Chakraborty, who spoke to bank officials, led to the formulation of an alternative that would allow the garden access to at least Rs 5.3 lakh cash that can partially tackle the wage problem.The garden needs Rs 26 lakh in total to pay all the fortnightly wages. (See chart)

The protest by the workers, which went on for around two hours, took place on the same day Trinamul leaders held hour-long programmes in tea estates across north Bengal against the Centre's demonetisation drive.

Alleging that the bank was not giving cash to Chinmoy Dhar, the garden manager, the 500-odd workers of Majherdabri started shouting slogans inside the bank, prompting policemen to rush to the scene.

"Since November 23, the manager has been coming to the bank. The branch manager and other officials are not allowing him to withdraw cash for wage payment and saying that they have not got approval from higher officials," a garden source said.

After the manager returned to the garden empty-handed yesterday, the workers demonstrated in the garden this morning. They then went to block the garden road but the management managed to dissuade them from protesting there. Finally, they came to the bank in tractors and started their protest around 12.45pm.

After an hour or so, Sourav Chakraborty, the Alipurduar TMC MLA, reached the bank and took all the workers outside and joined the protest.

He spoke to officials of the bank, including Nandita Roy, the branch manager and the alternative was worked out so that the garden management would be able to get more cash.

Bahudor Lakra, a worker of the garden, said: "We have not got our wages and don't have money. All other gardens close to ours have disbursed wages."

In other gardens, Trinamul leaders joined in hour-long protests organised in estates.

In Terai, state tourism minister Gautam Deb went to Merriview Tea Estate, around 20km from Alipurduar town, and held a meeting with tea workers and their families.

However, instead of organising the protests under the banner of the Trinamul Cha Bagan Mazdoor Union, the single union floated by party chief Mamata Banerjee on August 20 in Calcutta, the leaders were seen organising protests under the banner of different trade unions.

"Multiplicity of trade unions in the tea belt is one of key problems of Trinamul. Workers get confused as leaders of these different unions approach them," a senior Trinamul leader said.

As the party held protests in tea estates today, it was found that workers were shouting slogans under banners of the Trinamul Tea Plantation Workers' Union headed by Joakim Buxla and the Dooars Workers of Tea Plantations' Union headed by Mohan Sharma as well as the Terai Dooars Plantation Workers' Union headed by Sukra Munda.