Unions to dangle land right carrot in tea belt

 TT, Siliguri, May 14: The tea garden wings of the Gorkha Janmukti Morcha and an Akhil Bharatiya Adivasi Vikas Parishad faction led by John Barla have decided to carry out a campaign among workers in the Terai and Dooars, highlighting that they will be provided with land rights if the plains are brought under the Gorkhaland Territorial Administration. The campaign will be spearheaded by the Joint Action Committee comprising the Terai Dooars Plantation Labour Union, and the Progressive Tea Workers’ Union, an affiliate of the Parishad. Barla is the chairman of the committee. The Parishad union is largely pro-Barla, even after he was expelled from the outfit by the state leadership. “The Left Front had been ruling the state for more than three decades and it didn’t do anything to give land rights to the tea garden dwellers. Even after the Trinamul Congress came to power, the workers continue to live in pathetic conditions. 

Although forest dwellers were given secured land rights, the tea garden labourers are still deprived of the same,” said Suraj Subba, the general secretary of the Terai Dooars Union, an affiliate of the Morcha. Subba said the garden workers in the Terai and Dooars would be given land rights if the areas were included in the GTA. “We (Morcha and Parishad unions) will launch a campaign among the garden workers, telling them that the Morcha bargained for the tauzi department’s inclusion in the list of subjects to be handled by the GTA specifically for the objective of handing them land rights. Giving land rights to the workers will be the priority of the GTA,” he said. 

The two outfits felt the need to launch such a campaign after failing to win the support of majority of the adivasis, who form a major chunk of the garden workforce in the plains, for the inclusion of the Terai and Dooars in the GTA. “The adivasis have shunned Barla and others batting for the GTA in the plains till now. The Morcha and Barla now feel that they can draw a good number of the adivasis if they highlight the issue of land rights,” said an observer. Work hours Morcha today overruled an agreement signed by its tea trade union, which stated that labourers would have to put in eight hours of work a day. Roshan Giri, general secretary said: “We do not agree with the new conditions and we want the old system to be continued.” According to the old system, the one-hour lunch break was included in the eight hours work. That means the labourers had to put in only seven hours of work a day.