Central intervention sought to end plantation crisis

By Our Staff Reporter

BANGALORE, DEC. 13. The United Planters' Association of South India (UPASI) and the Karnataka Planters' Association (KPA) have urged immediate Central intervention to halt the crisis affecting the plantation industry.

A joint UPASI-KPA delegation had met the Prime Minister, Mr. A.B.Vajpayee, and the Finance Minister, Mr. Yashwant Sinha, on December 11 and 12, and pointed out that the crisis would deepen once the WTO (World Trade Organisation) norms came into effect.

According to the KPA president Mr. Peter Mathias, UPASI and KPA had requested the Centre to introduce a number of medium-term measures such as more controls on quality, price and data; suspension of special imports from Sri Lanka; increase in customs duty to bound rate levels, and re-classification of rubber as an agricultural product.

The UPASI memorandum to the Centre contained a detailed background on the reasons for the plantation crisis. It attributed the low tea, coffee and rubber prices to factors such as the buffer stock of rubber created in 1995-1996, the import of low-cost/quality tea/coffee from South East Asia and the import from SAARC countries and Sri Lanka.

UPASI, in a release, stated that the plantation industry was the most labour-intensive one employing one million workers. The industry also contributed export earnings worth Rs 4,500 crore every year. At the moment, however, plantation owners were unable to pay wages/PF and some plantations had even closed down. Workers had gone on a token strike on December 11, and now the position would deteriorate even further once (quantitative restrictions) were removed under the WTO regime.

Other measures suggested by UPASI included abolition of Excise Duty on tea; withdrawal of Clause 17 of the Tea Marketing Control Order (TMCO) which stipulated that tea producers should route 75 per cent of their produce through auctions; suspension of duty- free plantation commodity imports; strict implementation of the Prevention of Food Adulteration Act (PFA) on all imported goods; issual of Certificate of Origin for tea blends that were not 100 per cent of Indian origin; domestic promotion of coffee and so on.

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Section  : Southern States
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