On Friday, cashew workers Sandhya and Geetha chanced to meet near the gate of their factory at Kilikollur. They were seeing each other after a gap of three months since the factory owned by the state Cashew Corporation was closed due to a shortage of raw cashew. The duo was happy since they were told by a factory officer that the procurement of raw cashew would happen soon. But the enterprising women aren’t sitting idle after the factory’s closure. Sandhya is doing MGNREGS work and Geetha has joined a private factory as a temporary worker.
Still, Geetha wishes for an early reopening of the factory. “The work and pay conditions here are more attractive than in private factories. Also, we are given suitable seats, gloves and other amenities while small-scale private factories cannot afford them,” she said. According to the data with the Cashew Industry Protection Council (CIPC), only 480 of the total 864 factories have reopened after the general lockdown. Kollam is hailed as the cashew capital of the country but the sector is ailing, says council founder and former president K Rajesh.
“The industry was already ailing and the Covid-19 worsened it. The government’s initiatives like the restructuring of bank loans helped many units. But units which were already stressed before the pandemic are yet to restart,” he said. The cashew workers, about 3 lakh, are considered a vote bank in the district which mostly worked in favour of the LDF in the past three assembly elections.
Khadeeja who works at a private factory says that life would have been miserable for her if not for the job. “This work helped me take care of my family, give education to my boy and girl children and also to marry off the girl,” she said. The 45-year-old divorcee has been doing the work for the past 17 years. She works in the shelling section where the kernel is extracted from raw cashew. Workers in the shelling and peeling sections are paid according to the work done. Khadeeja gets the government-fixed wage of Rs 36 for shelling 1kg of cashew. Her colleagues in the peeling section would get Rs 42 for 1 kg.
The daily output of workers in both sections range between 7 and 12 kg. Workers in the third section, grading of kernels according to their quality, are given a daily wage of Rs 285. Workers in all sections are entitled to a DA of Rs 46 per each working day. Migrant labourers are giving a tough challenge to native workers, according to unit manager Sunil. He employs half a dozen workers from other states in the shelling section. “They were quick to gain expertise in using manual shelling machine. It requires a knack to get the kernel undamaged. Unfortunately, the native women couldn’t learn it despite many attempts,” he said.
Seventy-year-old Thankamma who works in the shelling section opines that the sector provides safe employment opportunities to women. “Most of the people are working at units near their homes. The salary is a bit low but one has the ESI, PF and welfare fund board pension benefits,” she said. Thankamma had retired from a KSCDC factory in 2006.
She is the lone breadwinner of her family after the death of her husband and six of the seven children. Her son is bedridden after an accident. CPIPC former president K Rajesh, also an entrepreneur, says the sector is limping back to normal after the pandemic effect. The demand is growing up slowly. Shortage of manpower would be the biggest challenge for the industry in future, he says.
M S Vidyanandan
Reporting from Chirakkara in Eravipuram and Kilikollur in Kollam