Summary:
Tea garden workers’ wages comprise both cash and kind components.However, even this interim wage increment, Gowala said, has not been received by workers for two months. Two and half years have passed since the BJP-led government came into power, but it is yet to fulfil its promise to ensure that tea workers get minimum wage,” general secretary of ACMS Rupesh Gowala told TOI.There are about 10 lakh tea garden workers in Assam, producer of half the country’s tea. In the run-up to the assembly election in 2016, BJP had promised to increase the daily wage to Rs 351 for tea garden workers in its manifesto and reiterated the commitment after forming the government. But the workers started getting the interim increment wage from March 1. “Till now, the government has not been able to secure this,” Gowala added.At present, tea garden workers get Rs 167 a day in the Brahmaputra Valley and Rs 145 daily in the Barak Valley..