IDUKKI: The only reason for 76-year-old Ganeshan and his wife Annabhagyam to continue living in their rundown, single-room house at the tea workers’ quarters, on Division 2 of the 2,700-acre Peermade Tea Company (PTC) plantation, is the hope that its owner will one day reopen the estate and their PF and gratuity dues, amounting to over Rs 4 lakh, will be paid off.
When it rains heavily, the couple is forced to abandon their ramshackle residence and seek shelter elsewhere. They return when the skies clear up to pick up the pieces — patch up the roofs and cover them with tarpaulin sheets. For the past 22 years, this has been the routine for them as well as the 500-odd tea-worker families settled in Division 4 of the estate, near Elappara in Kerala’s Idukki district.
PTC ended operations in 2002. But its over 1,300 employees continued working on the estate, earning a living from the sale of tea leaves they themselves pluck. The allotment — restricted to 1,200 bushes per worker — is decided by the unions, which more or less run the show.
The fortunes of the company, owned by Thiruvananthapuram-resident Rama Krishna Sarma, started to decline when it failed to fetch good prices in auctions. Production costs escalated and revenue decreased. Global recession and poor management escalated the crisis. As the company faced losses, it denied salaries and benefits to its labourers, which prompted protests. The owner finally abandoned the firm on December 13, 2000.
As employees can now work only the bushes allotted to them, plucking is carried out 15 days a month as it takes 20 days for the tender leaves to grow on shrubs.
‘If we leave estate, our hard-earned money will be lost’
“One worker toiling from morning to evening can pluck about 30kg of leaves. During off-seasons when the availability of tea leaves in the market drops, our produce fetches up to Rs 15 to Rs 20 per kg. During normal seasons, however, the returns are a mere Rs 10 to 13 per kg,” Lakshmi Balram, one of the workers told TNIE.
If the profit for agents who procure the leaves from workers and the monthly subscription of unions are excluded, each worker makes a measly Rs 5,000 a month from the sale of tea leaves. If a worker falls ill or he/she is not able to work, they have to employ outside labour at Rs 450 a day.
Since this income is not enough to run a family after footing electricity and water bills, most of the adults do other odd jobs to make ends meet. “Life is miserable here. The condition of the houses are so bad they could collapse on us anytime. I have worked for the company for 40 years. If we leave the estate, our hard earned money will be lost,” Ganesh said.
Even though the Plantation Labour Act, 1951, and the Kerala Plantation Labour Rules, 1959, mandate provision of drinking water, hospitals, housing, schools, canteen, creches, recreational facilities, holidays, sickness allowance apart from bonus, gratuity, provident fund, holiday wages and maternity benefit, for workers these benefits are but a distant dream for the workers. According to sources with the labour department, around `13 crore of workers’ gratuity is pending with owners. This includes the dues of around 500 workers who have not yet filed applications with the labour department.
“The department had issued an order determining the gratuity of as many as 890 workers of PTC, who filed applications, which amounts to around `8 crore,” Deputy Labour Commissioner (Kottayam) Firoz P M told TNIE. “This is for the period from when the estate was closed down to 2015. However, the High Court last Tuesday stayed the order, while asking the management to deposit the gratuity dues till 2000,” he said.
“I am yet to receive the HC order, but we will take further steps based on the directive,” Firoz added.
A senior official who has served both on the plantation and the labour department told TNIE that reopening the estate will improve the condition of workers. “However against the backdrop of the tea industry facing setbacks due to lower profits, the chances for such a move are minimal. However the department is taking all possible efforts to ensure the benefits that the workers deserve,” he added.