Sri Lankan tea estate workers seek wage hike

By Nirupama Subramanian

COLOMBO, FEB. 22. Sri Lanka's tea estate labourers are agitating for a wage hike to meet the rise in the cost of living following the steady depreciation of the currency since last June.

MPs of the Ceylon Workers Congress (CWC) began a satyagraha at Hatton in the tea growing Nuwara Eliya district on Monday to demand a Rs. 400 cost of living allowance per month for the workers from the plantation companies.

The Government has appointed a five-member committee to look into the demand, but Mr. R. Yogarajah, one of the MPs, today said that the agitation would continue till the demand is met.

A breakaway group of the CWC now banded together as the Ceylon Workers' Alliance, said last week that though it had not been consulted on the satyagraha, it would not oppose the demand.

The CWC wants the Government to extend to the plantation workers a July 2000 Presidential notification granting all private sector employees a wage hike of Rs. 400.

But under the notification, those employees who were given a wage rise under a collective agreement between January and July 31, 2000, are not eligible for the allowance.

Mr. Yogarajah said the exclusion clause was included ``deliberately'' to discriminate against the plantation workers, whose unions had entered into a collective agreement in June 2000.

The agreement gave the workers an increase of Rs. 6 per day, and was signed on the day the Government widened the trading band of the rupee, which effectively neutralised the gain.

Under the agreement, the trade unions forfeited their right to strike for more wages for two years, which is why the CWC has resorted to a satyagraha.

The agreement, signed between a federation of employers and three trade unions including the CWC, has come in for strong criticism by other trade unions as anti-labour.

The plantation companies have said they would be unable to bear another wage increase, but the CWC position is that with a record tea production and high exports, the employers can more than afford to give the workers a little more.

``The increase of Rs. 400 cannot cost the companies more than Rs. 2 billion for the whole year. This is just 10 per cent of the total revenue increase (for the tea industry) from 1999. This is something they can share with the workers,`` Mr. Yogarajah said.

There are an estimated 500,000 workers in the tea plantations. Most of them are Indian Tamils whose forefathers came to Sri Lanka in the 19th century to work on the estates.

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Section  : International
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