Bonus worry for tea workers

TT, Alipurduar, Sept. 25: Over 1,000 workers of Kohinoor Tea Estate in Alipurduar district are in doubt whether they will receive bonus ahead of Durga Puja as the management has abandoned the garden about a week ago.

Sources said that during the bipartite talks held between tea planters' associations and trade unions, Kohinoor was considered as a sick estate and it was agreed that the garden would pay bonus at 11 per cent rate instead of the industry wide rate of 19.75 per cent. Some other sick gardens in the Dooars and the Terai are also paying at such lower rates.

After disbursement of bonus had started in other gardens, a senior official in Kohinoor told the workers about 10 days ago that they had not received any funds from the management and were not in a position to pay the bonus. This left the workers annoyed and they demonstrated in front of the garden manager.

The workers had alleged that on September 19, when they reached the garden to join their duties, they could not find any managerial staff.

Yesterday, four assistant managers reached the garden. But they could not assure the workers when the bonus would be paid and left the garden after the labourers refused to join work.

"There is no electricity on the estate and we cannot afford to hire a generator. We fail to understand why the management behaved in such a manner ahead of the Puja," said a worker.

Representatives of the tea company that runs the garden could not be contacted and there is no intimation from the management's side when the bonus would be paid.

Amitangshu Chakroborty, the principal advisor of Indian Tea Planters' Association, said the bonus for the workers of Kohinoor was fixed at a lower rate and the management should pay it at the earliest.