Tea garden workers’ daily wages go up by Tk 25

The daily wage of the tea garden workers across the country has been hiked by only Tk 25 to Tk 145 from Tk 120 against their demand of increasing the amount to Tk 300.

The meagre wage was set after a meeting held between the Department of Labour and the Bangladesh Tea Workers Union at the department’s divisional office in Sreemangal of Moulvibazar on Saturday afternoon.

After the meeting, the union’s acting general secretary Nipen Paul announced to withdraw their strike.

Moulvibazar-4 constituency MP Abdus Shahid and Department of Labour Director General Khaled Mamun Chowdhury, among others, were present at the meeting.

The lawmaker later told the reporters that the prime minister has asked to set the wage at Tk 145 for the time being.

“After returning from a foreign visit, she will sit with the leaders of the tea garden workers over their demands. Upon this assurance, they announced the suspension of the movement,” the lawmaker added.

Bangladesh Tea Workers Union Organising Secretary Bijoy Hazra said the workers will return to work at their respective gardens on Sunday.

The dramatic development of fixing such a meagre wage comes just three days after the union leaders rejected a proposal put forward by the garden owners at a meeting in Dhaka to hike the daily wage only by Tk 20 to Tk 140.

Seeking the intervention of the prime minister, Bijoy Hazra then said that it was not possible to meet the expenses of their family with the wage the garden owners proposed.

On August 9, the Bangladesh Tea Workers Union started observing a two-hour work abstention, demanding a daily wage hike to Tk 300, against the backdrop of rising prices of daily essentials.

On August 13, the workers across the country went on a full-scale strike to press home their demand.

Bangladesh is producing a record amount of tea every year through the toil of the tea workers.

In 2021, a record 96 million kilograms of tea was produced in the country thanks to the hard labour of the underpaid tea workers.

Although two agreements on increasing wages were signed, the fate of more than 1.5 lakh tea workers in the country has not changed a bit.