GUWAHATI: Tea garden workers erupted in protests across Assam on Thursday with some blocking highways against the cashless system of payment of wages and the Centre’s move to do away with the system of providing subsidized ration to them.
The workers, who came out under the banner of Assam Chah Mazdoor Sangha (ACMS), demanded the government immediately roll back the decisions. The Union labour ministry is planning to draw curtains on the British-era system of “cash and kind” wages for the plantation workers and make cash payments in their bank accounts mandatory. Under the Plantation Labour Act, 1951, the wages of plantation workers include cash besides ration, healthcare and education services (in kind).
The daily wage of a plantation worker in Assam, with effect from January this year, is Rs.137. He or she is also entitled to 35 kgs of rice and wheat every month at subsidized 54 paise per kg. The workers are demanding that they be paid wages in the age-old “across the table” system. “We staged the protests against the Centre’s anti-people policies, which have affected the tea garden workers in Assam. They have been receiving ration at subsidized rates for decades now but a conspiracy is being hatched to do away with the system,” ACMS president and former Union Minister, Pawan Singh Ghatowar, told Express. “The workers will not accept this. The government has to spell out if the money, to be transferred to the bank accounts of workers in lieu of ration, will be on a par with market prices,” he said.
The ACMS said the cashless system of payment of wages would make matters worse for the workers as they were mostly illiterate. Assam has some 850 tea estates with the number of workers (permanent and casual) estimated at around nine lakh. Together with their family members, some 25 lakh-30 lakh people are the beneficiaries of subsidized ration.