Tea garden workers continue strike, want PM’s intervention

The workers of 167 tea gardens across the country, including 92 of Moulvibazar, continued their strike on Thursday as the garden owners proposed a daily wage hike by only Tk 20 against the demand for an increase to Tk 300 from Tk 120.

The owners offered an increase in wage from Tk 120 to Tk 140 at a meeting with tea workers at the Dhaka office of the Labour Department on Wednesday night.

Bijoy Hazra, organising secretary of the Bangladesh Tea Workers Union, said it is not possible to meet the expenses of their family with the wages they proposed. “So we want the intervention of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina.”

A tripartite meeting will be held in Dhaka on August 23 led by the Labour and Employment Minister.

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

Workers demanded an increase to Tk 300 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.

Although two agreements on increasing wages were signed, the fate of more than 1.5 lakh tea workers in the country hasn’t changed a bit.