According to a report on the conditions of the tea labour in India published recently, the NCLR charged the tea industry of violating all provisions of the Plantation Labour Act, 1951 with immunity.

``They live and work exclusively for their respective plantations without free choice in terms of work and the place of living. They are attached to the respective tea estates from their birth to death. From father to son, mother to daughter they are captive to the tea garden owners.''

The report categorically stated that the government of India was answerable to the people of the country and the international community for exploiting labour in the tea plantations. The report said that in past 150 years although the industry has grown and was competing in the international market, the labour structure and industrial relations practices have remainunchanged since the colonial period.

The tea plantation industrialists, however have failed miserably in their social responsibilities.``The tea plantation areas are conspicuous by the underdevelopment in general infrastructure, road maintenance, agriculture, allied industries and commodity market.

Question could be raised whether the industrialists have invested the surplus from the profitable industry in the region or it had been stashed away to far away urban centres.

Nonetheless, this situation has given rise to ``regional imbalance and apparent ethnic tensions,'' the report said.

``They did not spare the trade unions too. In spite of the fact that wage constitutes the most important component in all negotiations between trade unions and the management of tea plantations in West Bengal and Assam, workers receive abysmally low wages even as late as in 1999. In West Bengal, the daily wage was Rs 32.30 while in Assam it was Rs 31.60,'' the report pointed out.

The report said in Assam thereexisted a practice whereby the state government notified as minimum wage, the wage agreed bilaterally between CCPA and the Assam cha mazdoor sangha (ACMS).

This was improper and illegal under the provisions of the Minimum Wages Act, because only a statutorily constituted minimum wage committee has the authority to fix minimum wages.

The arbitrariness and fraudulence of this practice was evident from the recommendations of the recently constituted minimum wage advisory board proposing Rs 49 as minimum wage which was much higher than the negotiated wage.

The daily wage for those who pluck the leaves were fixed on the minimum weight of leaves. In West Bengal, there were cases in which if the stipulated quantity was not met they had to make up for the shortfall by taking leaves from their colleagues or by compensating it next day by plucking more.

The investigating team found that despite living in for generations, the labourers were kept under a sense of tremendous insecurity by denying them the right tohomestead of the place whether they have been living all these years. Most cruel was the threat of eviction if they had taken up any job outside.

In Assam, workers were forced to live in slum like situations in the vicinity of the tea plantations and in West Bengal workers themselves had to construct kutcha houses without adequate facilities. In both the states, management had stopped constructing pucca houses.

The report said that about ten to twelve per cent of the workers in the tea plantations were child workers. The number of child labours was higher in Assam's tea gardens.

The report recommended that respective government should take necessary steps to ensure that the industrialists respect their social responsibilities, invest the surplus amount for infrastructural and educational development of the region and in the development of allied and other industries.

Social task force should be constituted by the respective state governments for the immediate and speedy implementation of provisions ofthe Plantation Labour Act.

On a long- term basis, the campaign proposed the constitution of a national commission on plantation labour which should look into the question of a national wage policy for plantation labour and their working and living conditions.