Tea boss mail shows gap

AVIJIT SINHA, TT, Siliguri, Nov. 24: A letter by the chairman of the Tea Board of India to the chief secretary yesterday requested him to ask district magistrates in tea-producing areas to expedite payments to planters against their deposits, 48 hours after the RBI scrapped the payment procedure.

The letter by tea board chairman Santosh Sarangi has exposed how one central government office is unaware of what the country's central bank is doing during the demonetisation drive when there is widespread confusion because of the RBI's repeated changing of rules regarding cash withdrawals.

Sarangi wrote to chief secretary Basudeb Banerjee yesterday, referring to a state's directive issued to district magistrates of Darjeeling, Jalpaiguri and Alipurduar on November 16 regarding the payment of tea wages.

"... Irregularities have been reported regarding payment of wages to the tea garden workers in the state of West Bengal. Reports from the field offices of the Tea Board show that only in 10 gardens of Alipurduar district workers have received payments in this mode. ln the district of Jalpaiguri, the amounts remitted under this arrangement by the garden management to the account maintained by the district management have been refunded. As a result of that, in the entire Jalpaiguri district no wage payment to the tea garden workers could be made," read the letter, a copy of which is with The Telegraph.

The "arrangement" Sarangi mentioned in the letter seeking "strict compliance" was about disbursal of wages through government accounts. The district magistrates had been asked to let planters deposit money they needed to pay as wages in an account provided by the administration. The DMs, in turn, were authorised to issue cheques to the tea estate management, making use of an RBI November 11 notification which mentioned government departments could withdraw beyond the stipulated limit of Rs 10,000 a day.

The process was initiated and around 40 tea estates had disbursed wages in this manner.

However, on November 21, at a meeting between the regional director of the RBI in Calcutta and representatives of banks it was decided that tea estates would have to adopt a different procedure. "The planters need to go their banks where they have credit facility or where they keep major deposits. The banks will provide them the cash for wage payment after duly scrutinising documents," said an administrative source. As a result, the district magistrates started reverting the deposits made by some garden owners," the source said.

When Sarangi was asked over phone about the letter, he told The Telegraph: "I have requested the chief secretary to see that planters get necessary cash to make wage payments from the district magistrates as per the state's directive."

When told that about the new process mentioned by the RBI, he only said: "I have sent a senior official of the tea board (director, tea development) to Siliguri to speak to planters, administration and bankers to see that the wages are disbursed at the earliest." A representative of a tea planters' association said: "We fail to understand how such a letter could be sent to the state that too after RBI's decision to come up with the new process. It seems there is serious communication gap."

A section of planters said that when the industry was facing such a sudden cash crisis because of the demonetisation drive, it was startling to know that the apex government agency for the sector was "oblivious about the updates of the RBI".

"We feel the tea board should have all the necessary information at this point so that it can play an effective role in helping us to tide over the crisis," a planter said.