The management of four tea estates in the Darjeeling hills announced decisions to pay workers the annual bonus at the rate of nine per cent, prompting the labourers to stage protest programmes like road blockade and gherao on Wednesday.

Sources said the management of Phuguri tea garden in Mirik and Nurbong in Kurseong had announced on Wednesday that the bonus rates would be nine per cent.

On Monday, Kallol Banerjee, additional labour commissioner, north Bengal zone, had issued an advisory to the Darjeeling tea industry to pay the bonus at the rate of 19 per cent of the worker's annual earnings.

The advisory, however, said the “financially stressed garden” could settle the bonus rate by the management and the trade unions “at the local level”. “Both these gardens have cited this paragraph of the October 16 advisory of the state government to justify their decisions to disburse the bonus at the rate of nine per cent,” said a source.

The management of the Phuguri Tea Estate Private Limited has said the garden had to face “huge financial loss in the first flush season”. The first flush tea fetches the highest prices.

“At the prime time of season, we had incurred a huge loss due to the workers in the garden had stopped dispatches of our packed tea from 26th March 2022 to 20th April 2022, i.e. for almost 26 days prime first flush time, also continuous losses and other constraints,” the notice issued by the management of Phuguri reads.

A notice issued by the management of the Nurbong tea estate, which is run by Fine Tea Pluck LLP, said it could pay the bonus at nine per cent “due to continuous financial losses and other constraints since last year”.

Workers of the Phuguri tea garden blocked traffic on the road between Siliguri and Mirik throughout Wednesday. Demonstrations were also held in the Phuguri and the Nurbong gardens.

Kurseong MLA B.P. Sharma — both the gardens fall in his constituency — said the government should not have added the clause for the local-level negotiations.

“The planters are now taking advantage of this clause. The government is not standing by tea garden workers,” said Bajgain.

The Darjeeling hills have 87 tea gardens. In the past few weeks, five tea gardens shut down in the hills even though the closure was not directly related to the bonus issue.

Phuguri and Nurbong, which are members of the Darjeeling Tea Association (DTA), together employ around 500 workers.

DTA officials did not respond to calls from this newspaper for comments on the bonus rows.

Later in the day, manager R. Ganguly and assistant manager Akhbar Ali of Orange Valley tea garden in the hills were assaulted, said sources in the industry.

The source said the managers and their assistants in the Phuguri and Gayabari tea gardens were being gheraoed by workers till the filing of this report. The Gayabari estate is also in the hills.

The management of the Orange Valley and the Gayabari gardens had announced a nine per cent bonus.

Following the protests, the management of Phughuri and Gayabari agreed at night to pay the bonus at 19 per cent.

In Jalpaiguri district, two more gardens — Samsing and Bamandanga-Tondu — were closed down in the past 24 hours because of financial constraints. As a result, around 2,800 workers turned jobless.

The number of gardens which closed down over the bonus issue in the Dooars increased to eight.

Samsing has around 1,800 workers who came to know on Tuesday night that the management had closed down the garden.

In Bamandanga-Tondu, which is in Nagrakata block, the management said it could no longer run the garden because of financial problems.

A source said: “For Bamandanga, there was a proposal to pay the bonus at 12.5 per cent. The proposed rate for Samsing was 10 per cent. But nothing was finalised.”

The Bamandanga-Tondu garden has 1,000 workers.

“The management didn’t pay us the bonus and closed down the garden ahead of the festival. This is unfortunate. The state labour department should take initiatives to reopen the garden and make the management pay us the bonus,” said a worker of one of the shut gardens.

Subhagata Gupta, the deputy labour commissioner of Jalpaiguri, said: “We will convene tripartite meetings after the Puja for the reopening of the gardens.”

The management of both the gardens in the Dooars sent letters to the BDOs concerned, saying workers could pick and sell tea leaves for their livelihood, said a source.

Additional reporting by Our Jalpaiguri correspondent.