Tea Board Chairman Siddharth said here on Friday that the industry regulator would launch a collaborative effort with the State government to try to revive the closed tea gardens. He, however, denied that the deaths reported in the tea gardens were because of starvation.
“Our information suggests that a majority of these deaths were natural ones,” he said at a press conference. He said that presently, five tea gardens in West Bengal and three in Kerala were closed.
The Tea Board chief also said that there was a need to amend certain sections of the Tea Act in order to plug some loopholes that make it difficult to reopen gardens under new management.
Tea industry was governed by two legislations — The Tea Act, 1953, and the Plantation Labour Act 1951.
“We can explore the possibility of handing over the management, but the Tea Act is silent on it,” a senior official of the industry regulator said, adding that earlier attempts to auction closed gardens did not meet with much success.
Mr. Siddharath, who is an acting chairman, welcomed the State government's move to extend relief packages. He said that while many gardens had closed down in 2007 when the industry hit a rough patch, most had reopened.
“Obviously the managements of these (closed) gardens are at fault,” he pointed out.
These gardens are located in Dooars tea belt of north Bengal, which account for a quarter of the country's tea output that averages at 1,000 million kg.
The Tea Board move comes after reports of alleged starvation deaths in Raipur Tea Estate and Red Bank Tea Estate in Jalpaiguri, which was closed, leaving workers jobless.
