The Consultative Committee of Plantation Associations (CCPA) will soon prepare a revival plan for the tea industry whose health has been failing, affecting the workers.
The CCPA said that concerns have been raised over the declining revenues of the industry in the face of rising costs of production.
“In West Bengal, prices have dropped in the Dooars – Terai region as well as in Darjeeling,” a senior official of CCPA, the apex association of tea-rubber, coffee and cardamom industry said.
Earlier this week, a Group of Ministers set up by the West Bengal government to address certain core industry issues, held a meeting with the CCPA and its constituents associated with the tea industry.
The meeting comes on the back of a notification of the West Bengal Tea Plantation Employees’ Welfare Fund Bill, 2015, which envisages setting up an Rs.100 crore fund to provide interest subvention to tea garden owners to help them undertake workers welfare schemes. The fund can also be used for providing margin money to incentivise either existing owners or new owners of sick and closed tea gardens to infuse additional capital for the gardens rejuvenation.
The state tea industry saw this policy intervention as well as this week’s meeting as a welcome initiative. “The meeting, a first-of-its-kind, focused on government-industry partnership for the growth and development of the industry,” a CCPA release said, adding that the industry was enthused by the state government’s proactive steps being taken for the industry’s long term sustainability.
“The discussions centred around the industry’s failing health and the government’s positive interventions to revive the industry. It is in this context that the revival road map became relevant.”
The CCPA also sought the government’s assistance in introducing National Rural Health Mission in tea estates, diversification of land use for alternative crops, tourism and rationalisation of power tariff. “The aim is to strengthen the health mechanism,” an official said.
While issues like higher costs of production and the costs on replanting bushes affect gardens in Assam and West Bengal alike, it is the gardens in this state which are suffering on account of their poorer earnings. “Nearly 60 per cent of the gardens in West Bengal are getting prices which are below-the-industry average,” an official said. This is linked with the age of bushes and the poorer quality of teas being produced.
West Bengal is the second largest tea growing state in India accounting for around 24 per cent of the output and 20 per cent of the country’s cultivated tea area. There are 309 gardens in the organised tea industry in the state. Between 2004 and 2007, 49 tea gardens closed in West Bengal on account of losses due to poor productivity and lower prices. Many reopened subsequently, but remained vulnerable and are now facing closure. The workers in these gardens as well as some gardens abandoned by the management are in dire-straits and have caused acute embarrassment for the government.
