Bengal Asked To Establish Body For Vetting EOIs By Tea Cos

Jalpaiguri: Pointing out that some 45 tea gardens in West Bengal have been chose for loan/subsidy disbursement till date (out of 81 applications received from tea companies so far) under the Government's Special Purpose Tea Fund (SPTF) scheme for productivity enhancement in the tea sector, Mr Jairam Ramesh, Union Minister of State for Commerce & Industry, said here that negotiations will be held soon with the West Bengal Government to put in place a machinery to evaluate EOIs pouring in from various tea companies for SPTF. The Minister said it has been decided to effect a ten-fold increase in allocation for social welfare measures in tea gardens (water, health, education of workers' children etc), from Rs 5 crore to Rs 50 crore.
The approach may also involve invoking of Section 16D of the Tea Board Act under which gardens may be taken away legally from absentee owners and handed over to new entrepreneurs willing to run the garden professionally. Citing the example of both Kanan Devan Hills Plantations in Kerala, now working under a worker-owned professionally managed set-up and Durgabari Tea Estate in Tripura, run by a workers' cooperative, the minister said efforts were on to bring some of the big closed gardens in the Dooars area such as Chamurchi, Samsing and Bharnobari.