The State government owes ₹2 lakh to the family of Podiyam Lakshman of Aligudem hamlet.
The amount is the bonus his six-member family, irrespective of age and gender, has earned by toiling hard for about 10 years to collect tendu leaves from the Naxalite-affected forest areas along the Andhra-Chhattisgarh border under the ‘Tendu Leaf Scheme’.
The A.P. State Forest Development Corporation (APFDC) has not paid bonus of ₹30 crore accrued during the period 2012 to 2021, to nearly 15,000 registered individual tendu leaf collectors in the Chintoor Agency area, according to the Forest Department officials.
The leaf collectors belong to the Koya, Konda Reddy, and Gutti Koya tribes, and more than half of them are women.
Revenue from royalty
During the period, the APFDC has earned ₹60.80 crore revenue by auctioning nine tendu leaf units in the Agency area. The revenue comes in the form of royalty paid by the bidders. After paying ₹23.30 crore towards leaf collection charges, its net revenue is ₹37 crore.
“The forest officials have been telling us that the Chief Minister has to decide on the pending bonus issue. We have never been told this at any stage – collection, packing, and during payment of collection charges. Many Chief Ministers have changed since 2012, but my family has not received the bonus of ₹1 lakh,” said Mottum Rajayya, a 45-year-old member of the Koya tribe from Tummala hamlet.
No tribal family can afford to boycott, or stop tendu leaf collection because of the pending payment, and as it is the only livelihood source during summer.
A leaf collector gets a maximum of ₹2,100 as bonus for a standard bag (SB). A single SB contains 1,000 bundles, each comprising 50 leaves. The leaf collection is done between April and June. The APFDC pays the collection charges and bonus to the leaf collector. Almost 90% of tendu leaves are despatched to West Bengal.
‘Who is responsible?’
“We have staged dharna and submitted representations to the officials at various levels. We do not know the supreme authority, or the official who is holding our bonus for over a decade,” the 25-year-old Lakshman told The Hindu .
For two seasons (2012-14), the leaf collectors were part of the Khammam district (now in Telangana) in the combined State. For this period, the net revenue was ₹13.10 crore out of the total revenue of ₹18.30 crore.
“The bonus for the period of 2012-14 has to be settled by the Forest Departments of both Andhra Pradesh and Telangana. The details of the bonus pending (2012-21) and the list of beneficiaries have been sent to the APFDC head office,” Chintoor Divisional Forest Officer V. Saibaba said, and admitted that he was not privy to the reason for the delay in clearing the dues.
Leaf collectors from the Gutti Koya tribe cannot even fight for their dues as they have migrated from Chhattisgarh.
