Tea garden workers call off strike after daily wage set at Tk 145

After observing a strike for the 11th consecutive day, tea garden workers on Saturday called off their movement as the prime minister asked the authorities concerned to set their minimum daily wage at Tk 145.

The daily wage for the tea garden workers has been fixed Tk 145 in line with the directives of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, Nupen Pal, acting general secretary of the central committee of Tea Garden Workers’ Union, told the media.

The workers will begin their work from Sunday, he said.

The Department of Labour held a meeting with the leaders of the agitation workers at the Divisional Labor Office in Sreemangal of Moulvibazar around 3:30pm to settle the issue.

Khaled Mamun Chowdhury, director general of the Department of Labour also a lawmaker of Moulvibazar-4 parliamentary constituency, representatives of Moulvibazar, Habiganj, Sylhet and Chattogram district administrations were present at the meeting.

On August 9, the Bangladesh Tea Workers Union started two-hour work abstention a day demanding daily wage hike.

Workers demanded an increase to Tk300 a day, with inflation rising and the currency depreciating and they started a full-scale strike on Saturday, after four days of two-hour work abstention.

Bangladesh is producing a record amount of tea every year through the toil of the tea workers.

In 2021, a record 96 million kilograms of tea was produced in the country thanks to the hard labour of the underpaid tea workers.

Earlier, two agreements on increasing wages of the tea garden workers were signed but the fate of more than 1.5 lakh workers in the country has not changed a bit.