A report filed by the Comptroller & Auditor General of India (CAG) in Parliament on August 8 has brought under glare the role of the Tea Board India, the apex government agency, over a span of five years.
The CAG report cited several shortcomings on the part of the board.
According to the CAG release, a performance audit of the tea board was conducted between November 2021 and April 2022, covering five fiscals from 2016-17 to 2020-21.
The CAG found that even though small tea growers contributed towards more than 50 per cent of total tea production in 2020-21, around 38 per cent of such growers were not registered as of March 2021 with the board and were outside the ambit of the board’s regulatory activities and developmental aid.
“This happened in the absence of a well-defined strategy to identify and register small tea growers. Also, 119 out of 1,573 big tea growers were not registered as of March 2021,” said a source.
The CAG also found lapses on the part of the tea board in monitoring tea production to confirm that brews of standard quality are produced.
Under the Tea Act, the board is authorised to inspect the quality of tea. However, factories were not adequately inspected in the five financial years, the report said.
“The shortfall of inspection ranged between 78.62 per cent and 91.95 per cent which showed poor monitoring on the part of the tea board,” reads the CAG release.
The board directs its officials to collect tea samples from manufacturing units and sends those to authorised laboratories for testing. These samples are to be tested once every six months. However, the audit observed that there was a shortfall in sample collection ranging between 84 per cent and 97 per cent.
Under the Tea (Waste) Control Order 1959, all tea factories should declare a minimum of 2 per cent of their production as tea waste.
“But the CAG has found that 72 per cent to 78 per cent of tea manufacturing units generated less than 2 per cent tea waste during these five years. There are also instances where factories had not generated any tea waste,” said a senior tea planter in Siliguri.
In each tea-growing district of the country, there is a provision to form a committee to monitor the price of green tea leaves payable to small tea growers. Under the Tea Marketing Control (Amendment) Order, 2015, the committee should hold a meeting each month.
But from 2016-17 to 2020-21, in Bengal, the number of meetings was less than two a year, the planter cognisant with the CAG report said. In the same period, not a single meeting was held in 10 of the 18 tea-growing districts of Assam. In the remaining eight districts, the number of meetings held in a year was less than four.
During the audit, the CAG also found that the tea board didn’t maintain a database on areas of extensions of plantation, replacement and replanting of tea bushes, their age, the district-wise yield of tea, labour productivity rate, among others.
The CAG release stressed updated and authentic data to help form policies related to the tea industry.
Sourav Pahari, the deputy chairman of the tea board, when contacted over the phone for his reactions on the CAG report, said he was busy in a meeting.
A source in the board, however, said they were aware of the observations of the CAG and the issues would be taken up.
Stakeholders of the tea industry reacted to the report.
“The issues raised by the CAG are serious, but the tea board alone cannot be blamed in all cases. We hope the gaps are resolved soon,” said Bijoygopal Chakraborty, the president of the Confederation of Indian Small Tea Growers Associations.
Prabir Bhattacharjee, the secretary general of the Tea Association of India, said the board would surely take appropriate steps. “As an important stakeholder of the tea industry, we continue to look at the tea board for proactive steps to develop the industry,” said Bhattacharjee, who represents an association of tea planters.
