Duncans staff leave garden...managerial staff of Dhumchipara tea gardens of Duncans Goenka Group, left the estate

TT, 22 June 2019, Alipurduar: The managerial staff of Dhumchipara, one of the tea gardens of Duncans Goenka Group, left the estate on Friday, leaving over 1,900 workers' life in uncertainty.

In 2015, Duncans had abandoned a number of its gardens in the Dooars and managerial staff had stayed away for over a year, without serving any notice to the workers.

Sources said on Friday morning, as workers went to the garden office to join their duties, they could not find anybody from the management. As they enquired, they came to know that all the managers had left the garden. This left them agitated and some of them demonstrated in front of the main entrance, while asserting that they would not join work for the day.

The female workers, who also joined the protests, demanded that the garden be handed over to a new owner while alleging that the group is not running the garden in a smooth manner.

In total, there are 1918 workers in the garden that is located in Madarihat Block of Alipurduar district.

The workers said they were yet to receive wages for the past seven weeks while the employees didn't receive their salaries for past two months.

"Recently, the manager was transferred to another garden. Since then, an assistant manager was running Dhumchipara," said a worker.

According to him, the management was supposed to disburse the wages on June 19 but failed. "We were told that wages would be paid on June 20 but no pay was made even on Thursday," said the worker.

S Tamang, the BDO of Madarihat, said he had spoken with representatives of the company. "They told us that the wages are likely to be disbursed on Monday," he said..