As plucking begins, tea garden owners and workers in Mirik not on the same boat

YAWAN GURUNG, EOI, MIRIK, MARCH 10, 2023 : The first tea plucking season has brought smiles to the faces of tea garden owners and managers, but teagarden workers are in a difficult predicament.

Plucking has started in Thorbu and other tea gardens in the Mirik subdivision. Due to rains in Mirik a few days ago, the tea plants have started growing. 

 As a result, plucking for the first flush tea has started. There is peace in the Darjeeling hills, too, for smooth functioning of the tea gardens. On the whole, the atmosphere is happy in tea gardens.

Garden workers who are doing the actual plucking, however, are plagued by various concerns. The controversy over distribution of ‘parya patta’ among people living in different tea gardens has left them confused. 

The daily wage rate for tea garden workers makes it difficult for them to make their both ends meet. Though tea is enjoying a good market and fetching a good price, workers have to be content with a limited wage. 

Plucking has started for the tea garden workers without many of the problems of tea garden workers being addressed.

The demand of tea garden workers that minimum wages in teagardens be fixed in accordance with the provisions of the Minimum Wages Act has not been met. 

 As payment of wages in tea gardens is irregular, many tea garden workers have been forced to leave work and go in search of employment in metropolitan towns or even overseas. Some have started their own business. As a result, the number of workers in tea gardens is decreasing every year.

Workers say that plucking of the first flush benefits the tea companies, workers get no extra benefit other than their daily wages. In other industries have increased over time, prices of essentials like flour, rice, pulses, vegetables and oil have increased; but the wages of teagarden workers have remained stationery. 

The indifference of the government towards problems of teagarden workers is making the future of garden workers completely uncertain