Negotiations Soon On Bonus For Bengal Tea Garden Workers

Kolkata: The industry-level talks for the payment of bonus for 2006-07 to over 2 lakh workers engaged in more than 200 tea gardens in the Dooars and Terai regions of West Bengal will begin here shortly. A total of 24 unions corresponded by their two apex bodies, namely, the Coordination Committee of Tea Plantation Workers, West Bengal, and Defence Committee for Plantation Workers' Rights, West Bengal, will take part in the talks. The garden owners will be represented by four organisations Indian Tea Association, Tea Association of India, Indian Tea Planters' Association, Jalpaiguri, and Terai Indian Planters' Association, Matigara, under the umbrella of Consultative Committee of Plantation Associations.

The bonus rates for 2005-06 changed depending on the Group to which a garden belonged. Thus, Group A gardens paid at the rate 11.25 per cent, Group B at the rate of 10 per cent, Group C at 9.15 per cent and Group D at 8.5 per cent. There were five other Dooars gardens not belonging to any of these groups and the bonus rates for them varied from 8.5 per cent to 10 per cent. There were 75 gardens in Group A - 66 in Dooars and nine in Teria, 38 in Group B (Dooars and Terai 19 each), 32 in Group C (Dooars 21 and Terai 11) and 13 in Group D ( Dooars eight and Terai five). It is estimated that the share of small-growers in the total tea output in Dooars will be about 20 per cent. In Terai, the small-growers account for 50 per cent of the estimated total production of about 77 mkg. In Terai, a total of 5,573 small-growers have a total cropped area of 7,400 hectares as compared to more than 16,000 hectares under 66 organised tea gardens. The difference in the cost of foodgrains supplied to tea garden workers under the erstwhile public distribution system and the present targeted public distribution system entails 60 paise rise in the cost of per kg of made tea.