Grant for closed tea garden workers

The Union government has sanctioned a special education and book grant of Rs 1.7 crore to about 16,000 workers of 13 closed tea gardens of North Bengal.

Each worker in closed tea gardens would get about Rs 1,000 under the grant. The cheque was handed over to R Ranjit, district magistrate of the Jalpaiguri district, by Pranab Mukherjee, external affairs minister, government of India on Tuesday in presence of Jairam Ramesh, minister of state for commerce and industry.

Speaking on the occasion, Mukherjee said the Tea Board should strengthen its research and extension system in North Bengal as it had apparently been neglected so far.

Ramesh said priority should be given to the opening of closed tea gardens and creating infrastructure for value-addition in ailing tea gardens. He also underscored the social and economic significance of small tea-growers which account for about 25 per cent of North Bengal's tea production. These tea gardens he said were in greater need of financial and technical assistance.

He said that there were about 12,000 small tea-growers in North Bengal but just about 2,500 were registered with the Tea Board.

"The goal must be universal registration so that all small tea growers can derive benefit from Tea Board's schemes and programmes," he said. Tea Board had catalysed the formation of 19 Self Help Groups (SHGs) of small tea growers with a total membership of around 1,200, he said.

Meanwhile, the Tea Board had issued show-cause notices to all owners of closed tea gardens in Kerala, West Bengal and Assam on October 4 asking them to respond within ten days as to why Section 16(E) of the Tea Act, 1953 should not be invoked against them.

This section empowers the Central government to take over, without any investigation, any tea garden lying closed for more than three months for purposes of finding a new owner.

Ramesh has spoken repeatedly of the Centre's determination to use Section 16(E) as a last resort to deal with recalcitrant owners who have failed to respond to the substantial financial relief package extended to them by the Centre four months back.

As of now, just three of the 13 closed tea gardens in North Bengal had responded to the show cause notice.

In Kerala, four of the six remaining closed tea gardens have responded.