Health centres in tea gardens: Report sought from DMs in North Bengal

MP  | 26 Apr 2023 : The state government has instructed the District Magistrates (DM) of all North Bengal districts to submit the report on the progress of setting up health centres and creche in 118 tea gardens of Bengal. 

Senior officials of the state government said that around 100 crore has been sanctioned for setting up the health centres and creche in tea gardens. Problems were faced while acquiring land for the project in the tea gardens, but the issue was settled later. 

A senior official of the state government said: “We have instructed the DMs to provide a report on the progress of the work. Consequently, we will send teams for inspection. The work was scheduled to be completed by March-end.” 

Recently, North Bengal Development minister Moloy Ghatak convened a meeting with all the state officials in North Bengal where he urged the officials to speed up the pending constructional work in the districts. 

According to senior officials, the workers of the tea gardens have been facing a crisis for a long time due to lack of proper health care centres nearby their houses. 

As a result, the initiative has been taken up so that the tea garden workers do not have to visit long distances for their treatment. It may be mentioned that the state government has already provided land rights to the tea garden workers of North Dinajpur, Alipurduar , and Darjeeling. 

The health centres will help them in getting adequate treatment so that they do not have to travel much for the initial treatment. In North Bengal, around 15 lakh people reside on tea estates and many of them are living for generations. 

None of them has, however, any right to the land on which they stay as it has been leased out to companies by the state government to grow tea. 

Courtesy Source- Millennium Post

https://www.millenniumpost.in/bengal/health-centres-in-tea-gardens-report-sought-from-dms-in-north-bengal-516563