Lankan Unions Urge End To Dispute

Sri Lanka's largest estate-workers union urged the government yesterday to use its emergency powers to end a wage dispute which threatens to push up world tea prices.

More than 400,000 plantation workers have been on strike since last Thursday, bringing tea picking and rubber tapping in the lush central hills and the south to a halt.

S Thondaman, president of the Ceylon Workers Congress (CWC), said in a letter to labour minister John Senaviratne that the plantation firms had failed to accept a compromise suggested by the minister.

It was time for the government to take firm action, said the CWC president, whose organisation is leading the strike. The labour minister has suggested a compromise and the unions have said they are ready to accept his formula.

 

Some 14 unions are demanding a hike in daily wages to Rs 105 ($1.69) from the current Rs 83. Estate firms are not willing to pay more than Rs 98. Several rounds of talks between the unions and plantation companies in the past week have failed to bring about a compromise.

Union officials said that Thondaman and Senaviratne met President Chandrika Kumaratunga yesterday and that Kumaratunga was likely to meet representatives of plantation firms later in the week to work out a deal.

Tea is one of Sri Lanka's biggest export earners. Last year the Indian Ocean island recorded its highest ever production of 276.86 million kg (611.86 million lb), up seven percent from 1996.

The country earned Rs 38 billion from tea exports in the first 11 months of 1997, up 22.6 per cent from the same period in the previous year, according to Central Bank figures. Brokers said there was sufficient tea to meet demand at auctions in the capital Colombo for the next three weeks, but global prices of the commodity could rise if the strike went on beyond that and supplies dried up.

The auctions in Colombo are the largest in the world. Sri Lanka is a small player in the international rubber market, but the strike is expected to hit rubber tappers in the lower regions of the country.

Rubber traders have said the strike would have little immediate impact on the industry as February was traditionally the wintering month when trees are rested and little tapping takes place. (Reuters)