Joint Forum of tea garden workers demand distribution of Rs 2 crore pandemic relief fund

EOI, DARJEELING, JAN 20, 2023: The Joint Forum, a conglomeration of seven tea gardens of the Darjeeling hills, on Friday submitted a memorandum to the Gorkhaland Territorial Administration, seeking the distribution of more than Rs 2 crore, collected during the start of the Coronavirus pandemic, to tea garden workers.

The JF members, comprising the Hamro Party, BJP, CPI(M), the Communist Party of Revolutionary Marxists, the Gorkha National Liberation Front, the Gorkha Janmukti Morcha and the Congress organized a rally from the Darjeeling railway station in the morning and reached LalKothi, the GTA headquarters, to drive home their point.

Representing the GNLF, S. K.Lama said money collected in the name of the tea garden workers should be distributed to the workers and not be utilized for any other purpose. 

“The GTA gets funds from the State Government and the Centre. Why use money collected  from the public and workers to build a Shramik Bhawan,” he asked. Fearing that the workers would be the worst affected during the pandemic induced lockdowns, the then GTA chairman Anit Thapa had taken the initiative to collect funds from the public to be distributed to the workers. Accordingly, Rs.2.12crore had been collected and Thapa had even announced that the GTA would provide a matching grant. With the pandemic over and election announced for the GTA, the money was kept unutilized in a bank.

However, after the GTA election last year, with Thapa taking over as the Chief Executive Officer, the GTA Sabha on September 19adopted a resolution to build a Shramik Bhawan in Siliguri with the amount collected under the GTA chairman’s relief fund. Prior to the decision, several rounds of meetings had been held with stakeholders, including trade unions affiliated to different political parties in the hills, without a concrete outcome. The JF said workers were not interested in Shramik Bhawan but wanted the fund to be distributed among them. 

“We have reached out to the workers and over 70 percent of them want the money to be distributed. It is also surprising that the GTA wants the opinion of the tea garden workers, when it has already taken a resolution to build a Bhawan,” said D.K. Gurung, president of the trade union affiliated to the Hamro Party. After becoming the GTA chairman, Thapa had said he would not listen to the trade unions but go to the tea gardens to take a referendum on how best to utilize the collected amount. The Gorkha Janmukti Morcha said the JF would take a decision on the way forward after two weeks.

“Today, the GTA chairman was not in his office. We submitted a memorandum with our demand to the executive director. We will wait for two weeks and sit for a meeting with our members and then take a decision on our next course of action,” said Suraj Subba, president of the GJM affiliated trade union. GTA executive director and Ex Officio Joint Secretary to the West Bengal government Samden Dukpa said he had received a memorandum and would place it before the GTA chairman. 

“We have deposited the relief fund amount in the bank which is safe. A resolution was adopted in the GTA Sabha to build a Shramik Bhawan with the amount in Siliguri. In fact, we have already made headway in procuring land for the Bhawan in Siliguri. We did have meetings with stakeholders earlier but we failed to come to a consensus, as varied views were placed,” he said. The hills tea industry is spread across 87 gardens employing over 55,000 workers, with their dependents. The distribution of the collected fund along with the matching grant of the GTA would imply roughly each worker will be entitled to get around a meager Rs 300.