Rice subsidy issue: Tea garden owners' association gives positive response

Associations of tea garden owners have given a positive response to the state government's proposal on giving the amount that they save by giving less subsidy for rice to workers along with the latters' wages.

A tripartite meeting in this connection was held in the office of the Labour department on Wednesday. Moloy Ghatak, the state Labour minister, headed the meeting in which senior officials of the department, representatives of tea garden owners and workers' associations were present.

According to sources in the state Labour department, there are five associations of tea garden owners in the state. Two of them have given their views in writing in this regard on Wednesday and the remaining three will be giving the same in the next one week.

After receiving the views of all the five associations, the state Labour department will be circulating them among the workers' associations and will ask for their stand. Another tripartite meet will be held within a month after getting the view points of all the associations.

It is learnt that the tea-garden owners' associations have urged the Labour department to finalise the actual savings that they made by giving less subsidy to distribute rice among workers. At the same time, the associations have urged the department to consider other expenditures like rent of godowns to store rice and wages of labourers to distribute the same, apart from the procurement cost of rice to calculate their savings. Since the associations have urged the Labour department to look into these issues, it could be considered that they have given a positive response to the proposal of the state government or else they would not have urged it to consider the other expenditures, said an official of the state Labour department. It may be recalled that on April 20, the state government had urged tea garden owners to take final decision on giving the amount that they save by giving less subsidy for rice to workers along with their wages, which was a long-standing demand of tea garden workers.