The minimum wage board for tea workers, a government-led tripartite body, has continued the 170-year-long tradition of depriving workers by recommending an unfair wage structure that conflicts with existing laws. The minimum wage recommended for tea workers is the lowest among the country’s major sectors, and woefully insufficient for maintaining a bare basic standard of living. Speakers at a seminar have expressed their concern over the wages of tea workers. The tripartite body, formed after nearly five years’ delay, recommended the same daily wage rates of Tk 117, Tk 118 and Tk 120 that have been provided for the past two and a half years.
However, the Bangladesh Tea Association claims that they are paying a daily wage of Tk 403 in cash and kind. They include facilities costs like house rent, healthcare, pension, overtime and many other costs which cannot be considered as wages according to section 45 of the Labour Law. Bangladesh has graduated to low middle-income status and is working to graduate to a middle-income country in future. But tea workers are living in ghettos and are deprived of facilities and are in a poor state. The wage structure for tea workers is way too low considering the upper poverty line of 2016, minimum wage of other sectors like garment or leather and average wage in the country.
We think the wage structure is discriminatory because while all workers are granted service benefits as per section-28 of the Labour Law of 2006, tea workers were stripped of the benefit in the 2018 amendment of the law. Besides, there is no casual leave for tea workers. Every woman worker in Bangladesh is exempted by law from working eight weeks prior to childbirth, except the women tea workers. The wage structure declared by the wage board is an injustice to the workers and clearly benefits the owners by not considering workers’ rightful demand. We cannot condone the discriminatory wage structure to benefit tea estate owners. The administration should interfere without delay. We want the discrimination to be end soon.
All wage boards have created crisis in their respective spheres for not being serious in applying realistic considerations with regard to survival and growth of the sectors. The wage for journalist has ruined journalism as a dignified profession. Most of them are opportunist collaborators of corrupt politics.
