A Leg-Up To Tea Workers

A Leg-Up To Tea Workers

- Philip Gain and Rownok Jahan

 The tea workers and their communities in Bangladesh face multifaceted difficulties at the workplace and in society. Their rights provided by labour law are not materialized. They remain far behind in education compared to the national level. Poorly paid, majority of the tea workers are malnourished. The houses they live in are generally in bad condition. They are not to own land. Importantly, their identities (as many as 80 communities are found in the tea gardens) are not recognized and their languages and cultures are threatened. These are perfect conditions for communities in the tea gardens to remain excluded and ‘tied’ to the tea gardens.

These difficulties were discussed at length in a workshop on 18-20 December 2017 in Sreemangal with learning objectives to analyze the protection of the tea workers and share experiences and scale up capacities of trade union and panchayet leaders. The society for Environment and Human Development (SEHD) organized the workshop attended by 21 leaders representing all of seven valleys and selection of panchayets.