Plantation Industries Minister Navin Dissanayake said he will submit a cabinet paper within ten days seeking approval to add Rs. 50 to the current daily wage of Rs.750 of tea estate workers as a budgetary allocation from the Government for one year.
The Minister told the media at the Sri Lanka Tea Board the Rs.50 would be paid outside the collective agreement reached on January 27 to increase the daily wage to Rs.750.
“Following repeated requests made by Hill Country New Villages, Infrastructure and Community Development Minister P.Digambaram, the government had taken this decision of increasing daily wages,” the Minister said.
A discussion had been held under the patronage of Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe at Temple Trees on Tuesday morning. “The Tea Board will allocate Rs.1.2 billion from their fund for this purpose as a loan and the Treasury will reimburse it to the Board as it will come as a budget proposal.The Prime Minister has agreed to do that,” the Minister said.
He said the present government is very sensitive to the issues related to estate workers since 72 percent of the estate workers voted to form the government in 2015.
“We are living in a highly politicised country. Everything is based on politics. So this is also a political issue but outside the collective agreement,” he added. Although unions representing a majority of the estate workers and the RPCs signed the Collective Agreement, several other unions including MP Digambaram’s National Union of Workers were not signatory to the Collective Agreement between plantation trade unions.So the government has to intervene to solve their issues, he said.
Sri Lanka Tea Board Chairman Lucille Wijewardena also addressed the occasion.
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