By Fakir Balaji, IANS,
Coonoor (Tamil Nadu) : Tea, coffee, rubber and spice planters in South India Tuesday called for drastic amendments to the various acts pertaining to land, labour and wages so that they could be globally competitive.
“There is an urgent need to overhaul the Plantations Act, the Land Reforms Act and the Minimum Wages Act to become competitive in a global market,” United Planters’ Association of Southern India (UPASI) president D.P. Maheshwari said here.
In his presidential address at the 116th annual conference of the planters’ trade body UPASI, Maheshwari said the high cost of production was a disadvantage to the plantation sector due to various statutory social costs unlike in other producing countries.
“As tea, coffee, rubber and spices are governed by the central plantation acts, the central government should regulate the working conditions including wages by divesting the state governments of the statutory powers exercised by them arbitrarily,” Maheshwari told about 800 delegates at the two-day annual meet.
Drawing the attention of Tea Board deputy chairperson Roshini Sen, who presided over the conference in the absence of Union Minister for Labour and Employment Mallikarjun Kharge, the outgoing president said alternatively, the advice of the central government should be made binding on state governments by amending the acts.
“The misuse of the minimum wages fixing machinery in all the three southern states (Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka) to lever up the labour cost is worrisome. The dichotomy must be corrected for the long-term survival of the sector,” he told Sen.
The Minimum Wages Act, enacted in 1948 to protect plantation workers, has to be amended to ensure a level-playing field for planters to face the stiff competition in domestic and export markets, he held.
Similarly, the Plantation Labour Act 1951, applicable to growers with above five hectares of land and more than 15 workers, mandates them to bear the social cost of providing free housing, healthcare and educational needs of the workforce.
“The recommendation of the inter-ministerial committee, set up by the labour ministry in 2003, should be implemented to share 50 percent of the social cost borne by planters, with 40 percent financial aid from the central government and 10 percent by state governments,” Maheshwari reiterated.
Though the tripartite industrial committee on plantation industry endorsed the recommendation Aug 25, 2005, the central government is yet to implement it for sharing half of the managements’ cost on social welfare schemes.
Seeking an early meeting of central and state governments with the plantation associations to discuss the issues and evolve a consensus, Maheshwari said the subsidy given to small farmers for re-plantation should be extended to corporates, as they play a vital role in the sector employing more workers and paying higher wages.
“As output of plantations owned by corporates has also to be enhanced to cushion high production cost, the government should not keep them out of the re-plantation scheme and deny subsidy to them,” he felt.
Terming the Free Trade Agreement (FTA) India signed Aug 13 with the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) a bolt from blue to the plantation sector, the president said the pact would have a catastrophic effect on the sector, especially in southern India where wages and production cost are higher than in the competing countries.
“The phased lowering of import tariff on tea, coffee, rubber and spices (pepper and cardamom) under the FTA will make us less competitive in overseas markets and threaten our survival when countries like Vietnam, Malaysia and Indonesia from the ASEAN region flood the domestic market with their commodities, produced at lower costs,” Maheshwari, who is also managing director of Kolkata-based Jayashree Tea Industries Ltd, warned the government.
The plantation sector plays a vital role in the economy of south India, employing over a million people and producing commodities valued at Rs.14,894 crore, including Rs.4,352 crore in fiscal 2008-09.
South India also accounts for 66 percent (1.08 million hectares) of the total plantation area (1.66 million hectares) in the country, 66 percent of the all-India realisation value (Rs.22,714 crore) and 72 percent of the total exports (Rs.6,025 crore) from the sub-continent.