Transparency International Bangladesh (TIB) has urged the authorities concerned to raise the wage of the tea workers logically through discussion instead of threating them to stop the ongoing peaceful movement across the country.
Tea workers’ daily wage of only Tk 120 after working for eight hours and sometimes even more, with limited facilities is discriminatory and unconstitutional, the graft watchdog body said in a statement on Tuesday.
Following the strike of the tea workers amid the rise in commodity prices, the proposal to increase their wages by only Tk 14 is a violation of their rights, it added.
TIB Executive Director Iftekharuzzaman said the ministries concerned should take steps to determine the logical wages acceptable to the tea workers through equality-based discussions considering the rights of the tea workers as citizens of the country.
While the workers have been trying to draw the attention of the tea garden authorities through strike for the past several days, the Director General of Labor Department recently termed the strike as ‘violation of labor law’ in a letter, said Zaman.
“It is nothing but an expression of solidarity with the colonial mentality of the tea industry owners, ” he said. He also said ‘The Minimum Wage Board’ of the country has set the minimum wage several times higher than other sectors.
“But the Ministry of Labour and Employment recommended to maintain the minimum wage set by the tea garden owners ignoring the ‘guideline’ of the ministry being influenced by some invisible force. And it needs to be looked into,” he added.
There is a rule of renewing the wage agreement between the tea workers and the garden authorities every two years.
Although in most cases the wages are fixed unilaterally by the garden authorities, the tea workers have been out of the wage agreement for the past 19 months.
In December 2018, TIB released a research report titled “Tea Garden Working Environment and Workers’ Rights: Good Governance Challenges and Pathways” where some recommendations were put forward to the government and authorities concerned to improve the tea workers living standard and fixing minimum wage compared with other sectors.
The organisation thinks that the research and recommendations are still equally relevant as a humanitarian solution to end the ongoing crisis.
