Joint Forum stir in Tarai, Dooars for tea wage hike

SNS, ALIPURDUAR, 1 DECEMBER: Thousands of tea plantation workers in the Dooars and the Tarai region of north Bengal demonstrated for an hour in front of their respective tea garden offices to press for their four-point charter of demands today.

Implementation of the Minimum Wages Act in the tea sector tops their list of demands that also include immediate opening of closed tea gardens, land rights for the plantation workers and distribution of ration allowance which the management of tea plantations used to give to workers

As the government has taken the charge of distributing ration to the tea workers at present, the garden managements have stopped distributing ration among the workers.

Under the banner of the Joint Forum, the plantation workers also submitted memorandum to their respective tea garden managers after the hour-long demonstration today.

Joint Forum is a conglomeration 0125 tea plantadon workers' unions, except for the Trinamul Congress affiliated tea plantat ion workers union.

Tea plantation workers in West Bengal get Rs 132.50 as daily wages at present. The last minimum wages agreement for the workers in the state increased the same by Rs 32 for three years and the deal to this effect was signed in 20 February 2014. The wage agreement is supposed to be renewed every three years. However, the last wage agreement for the tea plantation labours in the state expired on 31 March this year.

Joint Forum, the united group of some Leftist and Rightist tea plantation workers' unions, has been demanding a new wage agreement for the tea plantation workers. The Forum had called a general strike, and organized gate meetings and demonstrations with the same demand earlier too.

"We will gherao Uttarkanya with the demand on 25 January. We will organise a stronger movement than that of the past.The state government must make arrangements for the minimum wages agreement," said the convenor of the Joint Forum, Gopal Pradhan. Tea planters are, meanwhile, claiming that the movement organized by the joint Forum was uncalled for, as, according to them, the tea industry is willing to increase the wages of the plantation workers.