Demonetisation: Tea belt under new crisis
SILIGURI: There seems to be no end of crisis for labour intensive tea industry in West Bengal tea belt in Darjeeling hills or Terai or Dooars region of foothills. Frequent change in prescribed system for the gardens to arrange cash for labour payment have brought the industry in front of a deadlock.
Entire tea belt in Bengal hosts over over 300 organized gardens and over 5000 small plantations with over 6 lakh heads directly dependents on them. Traditionally, almost entire tea workers community with low average academic enlightenment relies on cash transaction.
After the demonetisation move, arranging cash for workers weekly payment became a major crisis for the planters. To ease out the situation, following Assam tea belt, a system has been developed for the gardens to transfer their weekly labour payment amount to a specified account of DM’s office. Against this, the DM’s office was to instruct a bank to hand over cash of same amount in smaller denomination to the garden authority.
“Though partially, the system worked for few days. But, even after transferring the amount to administrative accounts and proper approval from there, many gardens failed to receive adequate cash from banks,” said KK Mintry, veteran planter and Chairman Terai Indian Tea Planters Association.
But bigger crisis started developing from 21st after District administrations informed about a new guideline. “As per that, now gardens need to withdraw cash from own account directly instead of going through administration,” said planters from Dooars. But, “Banks are refusing to give money as they have not received any fresh directive,” they said.
Moreover, “No one is clear about the procedure to get back the amount that we have already deposited to the DMs account. We are now cornered from both sides,” said senior planter from Terai region S Seal.”
“In Darjeeling district alone, the payment outstanding upto 12th Nov remained over Rs 10 crore. Against this, Banks could provide only about Rs 5 crore. By 19th, the need climbed up to Rs. 15 crore. The system could hardly support us there. Situation is equally worse in other districts with high density of tea plantations like Alipurdooar, Jalpaiguri or North Dinajpore. As a whole, it is already deadlock that we do not know how to handle,” said Mintry.
Source: ECONOMIC TIMES