The Trinamul Congress is all set to play the wage card again in the tea belt of north Bengal ahead of panchayat elections.
Trinamul's all-India general secretary Abhishek Banerjee who was in Alipurduar on Saturday said the state labour department had taken an initiative to hold talks with tea planters and trade unions to finalise the minimum wage in the sector. The matter has been pending since 2015.
“The state government is sincere about addressing the tea workers’ issues. On April 12, a tripartite meeting will be held in Siliguri on the tea wage issue and we are hopeful that there will be some good news for tea workers,” he told a public meeting in Alipurduar.
In Bengal, tea workers receive Rs 232 a day. The wage was last revised in June 2022. Before that, the daily wage was Rs 202.
Sources said the labour department would hold a meeting with tea planters in Calcutta on April 10 to know their opinion on the minimum wage.
The state government had constituted an advisory committee eight years ago to recommend to the government the minimum wage. However, the planters and the trade unions could not reach a consensus on the rate.
When Trinamul came to power in 2011, the daily wage was Rs 67.
“Since then, the Mamata Banerjee government has revised the wages regularly. It seems if the minimum wage is not fixed this time, there will be an interim hike again. Wage is one of the principal issues for the tea population and a revision ahead of the panchayat polls will surely put Trinamul in a better position,” said a veteran trade union leader.
In north Bengal, the tea garden population decides the rural election results in the districts of Jalpaiguri and Alipurduar, and in the Siliguri subdivision of Darjeeling district and the Islampur subdivision of North Dinajpur district.
In the 2019 Parliament polls and in the 2021 Assembly polls, the majority of the tea population voted the BJP. This has made Trinamul start taking additional initiatives for them, apart from providing benefits of different social welfare schemes.
In the past one year, the state started providing free houses to tea workers and identity cards were issued for them for the first time in the history of the industry. Also, crèches and health centres with ambulances are coming up in the tea belt.
“Unlike the BJP which has played the polarisation card to draw votes from residents of tea gardens, we have met our commitments. The tea workers and their families will stand by us in panchayat elections as the BJP and its legislators have not done anything for them,” said Alok Chakraborty, a veteran trade union leader and the chairman of Darjeeling (plains) district Trinamul.
Sources in Trinamul said if the minimum wage was finalised or even if there was a hike, the party would highlight that the tea workers in Bengal earned higher than those in the BJP-ruled Assam, the largest tea-producing state in the country.
In August last year, tea wages were revised in Assam. As of now, workers serving in the gardens of Brahmaputra Valley get Rs 232 per day while those in the Barak Valley are paid Rs 210.
