The wages that tea plantation workers received were meagre, CAG said. | Representative image
Wages of tea plantation workers in Assam are meagre and there are several shortcomings and areas of concern in the implementation of labour laws and provisions for worker welfare, a recent report by the Netherlands Court of Audit (CAG) said.
It was also held that the intervention of the state government in fixing wages as per the Minimum Wages Act (MW Act) was inadequate. The commission stated that efforts to improve the lives of workers have not resulted in any substantive change.
The performance audit on the implementation of tea tribe welfare schemes for the period 2015-16 to 2020-21 revealed that low income and lack of education are major barriers to the overall development of the workforce in the state.
The audit was conducted in four zones: Cachar, Dibrugarh, Nagaon and Sonitpur. There are 390 tea estates in the four sampled zones, of which 40 estates (10 percent) were selected based on the size of the estates and the number of workers.
In addition to reviewing the documents, the exercise also included interviews with 590 workers in the selected estates.
The report states that the Tea Tribes Welfare Department (TTWD) tried to address the problems of the workers but they lacked basic socio-economic data. Moreover, their initiatives were implemented haphazardly.
The report states that the wages received by tea plantation workers were meagre. It also highlights that the Assam government has not fixed the minimum wage as stipulated in the MW Act, 1948.
It was also alleged that workers were not part of the planned works announced by the state government, hence they were not entitled to the minimum wage norm and the variable allowance.
The Secretary, Ministry of Labour and Social Welfare informed the CAG that when the state government came up with initiatives to increase wages as per the MW Act, it was challenged in court and therefore the wages could not be increased as desired.
The report also pointed out the wage differentials between workers in Barak and the Brahmaputra Valley, but the Labour Ministry could not provide any justification for this.
According to the report, workers in the Barak Valley receive at least 10 percent lower wages than workers in the Brahmaputra Valley, and the government has never intervened to address the problem.
First publication: 01 Sep 2024 | 10:28 am IST