Tea garden workers continue strike

Tea garden workers in Sylhet continued with their strike on Wednesday, the 16th day of their protest movement, demanding a revision of their wages to Tk 300 from the existing Tk 120.

The Business Post found that tea garden workers were carrying on with their movement by staging protests and forming human chains in groups across several tea gardens in Sylhet.

After a meeting with the tea garden workers’ union leaders on Tuesday, the Panchayat heads decided to carry on with their movement until their demand for higher wages is met.

The movement started on August 9, when workers from 241 tea gardens in the country abstained from work for two hours, demanding Tk 300 as daily wages. As their demand was not met, they decided to go on a full-scale strike from August 13.

After holding meetings with tea garden owners and other stakeholders in the past two weeks, the tea garden workers’ union agreed to the resumption of work from Monday and get Tk 120 as wages for the time being, but that was rejected by the workers.

The ongoing strike is the continuation of the previously declared movement by the tea garden workers.

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 hasn’t changed a bit.

The wage of tea garden workers in Bangladesh is the lowest among the neighbouring countries. A worker in Bangladesh earns Tk 120 daily. Even in Kenya, a tea garden worker earns Tk 583 daily (converted from local currency), which is 4.85 times higher than what workers in Bangladesh get, according to media reports.

According to local media reports, a Sri Lankan tea worker earns Tk 264 daily (converted from local currency) and workers in Nepal earn Tk 324 excluding allowances per day.

According to reports by The Hindu and Times of India, Kerala has the highest daily wage — Tk 503 — for tea workers among the Indian states.

Karnataka has the second highest — Tk 449, followed by Tamil Nadu with Tk 406.80, West Bengal with Tk 276, Assam with Tk 251, Tripura with Tk 210, and Bihar with Tk 209.