The plantation community continues to be oppressed despite the copious tears shed on their plight by politicians and many others. Their hardships continue to be ignored and even the nominal wage increase promised at Budget time is yet to materialize. Even after 200 years since their arrival in the country, the estate community knows no other life outside their daily drudgery as tea pluckers.
It is in this context that the declaration made by President Ranil Wickremesinghe that he was committed to integrate the upcountry Tamils into the wider Sri Lankan society assumes significance.
Speaking at the NAAM 200 event in Colombo last week, President Wickremesinghe said it was the present Government’s policy to uphold the rights of all Sri Lankan citizens regardless of their background or ethnicity.
It was only recently that the plight of the plantation workers and the estate community in general formed the topic of yet another debate in Parliament with speaker after speaker raising the issue of the paltry sums paid to estate workers quite disproportionate to their signal contribution in bringing the third highest foreign exchange earnings to the country.
There were also discussions on how to free estate youth from getting entrapped into following in the footsteps of their parents and consigned to a life of tea plucking for the rest of their days. State Minister of Defence Pramitha Bandara Tennakoon, speaking during the Adjournment Debate on the socio–economic issues faced by the plantation community, called for making it mandatory for children in the estates to attend school at least up to the GCE O/L stage so that they could find decent employment instead of being confined to plucking tea.
Shortly after assuming office as the Head of State, President Wickremesinghe pledged to personally intervene to resolve the issues confronting the plantation community, the Tamils in the North and the Muslims.
The plight of the Estate community should be taken up at a different level as they have long been a voiceless lot ignored and discarded by all. This has made them ready supplicants of plantation sector politicians who had been using them all along for their personal enrichment, exploited and used for bargaining during the time of elections. Why not? The estate vote had been proved decisive in most national elections.
Hitherto, the estate Tamil community had been made the exclusive property of these crafty politicians with the knowledge and even the tacit support of national leaders. This way the community had been kept perennially tied to the electoral fortunes of these politicians and exploited to the hilt. Hence, it is time for the direct intervention of a national leader to redress their multifarious issues.
Most importantly, the plantation community should be rid of the drudgery of their existence and be delivered from their acute poverty. Today, for the estate community, there is no life beyond tea bushes and their line rooms. The children take after their parents as tea pluckers, for their economy does not provide for the luxury of schooling. Nothing has changed much for them during these 200 years. They still live in line rooms in the most primitive conditions, are paid paltry wages, and exploited in every other way.
This community deserves better considering that they are among those at the forefront of bringing foreign exchange to the country through their blood, sweat and tears. But they are condemned to live a hand-to-mouth existence.
Although the daily wage of a tea plucker was designated at Rs 1000, after deductions for EPF and Trade Union fees they are hardly left with even Rs. 800 to survive on. With a pound of bread now Rs. 150 and taking into account that plantation families are large ones – sometimes close to a dozen children in a family – and with bread being the staple in the estates, how these souls survive at all can only be left to one’s imagination.
Immediate steps should be taken to increase their daily wages so that they could come out of their dire situation. True, the Plantation Management Companies (PMCs) are facing hard times following the economic meltdown and the loss in exports during the pandemic. But this cannot always be cited in extenuation.
The PMCs had received many concessions from the Government in the past. They should be persuaded to loosen their purse strings on behalf of the estate community to whom life has become unbearable today. To make matters worse, there is also rampant alcoholism in the estates where rot gut (kasippu) is consumed even by the women folk. Perhaps, poverty and misery have made them find an escape from the devil’s brew.
Meanwhile, Labour and Foreign Employment Minister Manusha Nanayakkara has already proposed to bring special laws to protect the plantation sector workers’ rights. The Minister expressed confidence that the new laws introduced for plantation workers would give them better protection when it comes to employment-related issues.
While this is a positive step, measures should also be taken to emancipate the plantation community from their monotonous and slavish lives in the estates and absorb them into the mainstream community, as proposed by President Wickremesinghe at NAAM 200.
