Tea warehouses in Guwahati goes on strike for more rentals

A stalemate over rentals has forced the tea warehouse owners in Guwahati to go on an indefinite strike. If continued for long, the stalemate will have the potential to affect smooth auctioning of tea at Guwahati Tea Auction Centre (GTAC).

The bone of contention between the warehouse owners and tea industry has been the amount of monthly rental that tea sellers pay for storing their teas at various tea warehouses in the city before auctioning them at GTAC.

The present rate that the seller pays to a warehouse is Rs 16 per month for a bag of tea (33 Kgs). The warehouse owners are demanding a hike of at least Rs 8, which means Rs 24 per bag per month.

"We have been for long demanding hike in the rentals. Even in the neighbouring state of West Bengal, the rate is Rs 21 per month per bag. We have also scaled down our earlier demand of Rs 30 to Rs 24," said Ramesh Jain, president of Guwahati Tea Warehousing Association (GTWA) to Business Standard.

A meeting of both the parties, held on Saturday, could not arrive at any amicable solution, thus prompting the warehouse owners to go on an indefinite strike. They have, henceforth, stopped storing fresh supplies of teas. At the meeting, the tea industry had offered to pay Rs 17.50 per bag per month, which was a hike of Rs 1.50 from the present rate.

Jain informed that a second meeting is scheduled on Monday and he is hopeful that the deadlock will be solved.

Though the tea industry is not in a mood to relent much, they are worried that if the strike continues for long, it will certainly affect auctioning of teas at GTAC as warehouses will not be available for storing the teas for auctioning.

"Of late, there has been a steep rise in our input costs, still we are willing to negotiate with the warehouse owners, but Rs 24 is too high", said a tea industry source.