Kolkata: Many slips have developed between the cups and lips in the tea gardens located in North Bengal districts. Poverty, malnutrition and starvation deaths have become key words for defining the state of affairs in the tea gardens.

“Tea industry is bleeding and it has proved fatal for 1,800 workers during last four years,” says trade union leader Aloke Chakraborty.

According to General Secretary of the central committee of the National Union of Plantation Workers Aloke Chakraborty, 50 per cent of the 318 tea gardens in the Terai and Dooars region in the state were sick.

The condition of workers in the so-called healthy tea estates was also miserable, he added.

There are altogether 8,709 tea gardens in north Bengal spread across Cooch Behar, Jalpaiguri, Darjeeling and North Dinajpur districts.

“People are dying of starvation. The effects of malnutrition have made worker communities vulnerable to anaemia, tuberculosis, anthrax and severe dysentery,” Chakraborty said.

The industry sources say the labour cost has escalated sharply in recent years, fertilisers have also registered quantum jump in prices and it was not a much profitable business now.

“It was the reason behind the tea plantation farms’ going sick and closing business,” Dhunseri Tea and Industries CMD Chandra Kumar Dhanuka said.

However, the union leaders accuse the owners of redirecting profits from the gardens into other businesses.

“Tea garden owners don’t reinvest the profit they earn from tea gardens into the same business or ancillary businesses. They take that profit and invest in some other business at some other place,” Chakravorty said.

During the past few years, several tea estate owners have abandoned their gardens abruptly without even paying the salaries and provident fund dues of the employees, he added.

The year 2006 was good for India’s tea industry as it exported 219 million kg. But the export figure plummeted in 2007 due to competition from Kenya. But a good showing by the tea industry doesn’t guarantee better times for its workers.

“On March 31, 2008, the wage agreement of the tea workers expired. It is usually done for three years. No new agreement has been chalked out yet,” the union leader said.

He added there is a high possibility that in the future when the revised wage structure is announced the workers have to sacrifice their arrears.

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