From Our Correspondent
Agartala: With the tea industry suffering due to shortage of labourers, the Tea Board of India (TBI) has come up with an ambitious plan to lure them. With the aim of attracting more people to the tea industry, TBI has launched a labour welfare scheme to be implemented in the state along with rest of the country.
“The labourers of tea industry will be happy to learn that their children would be getting educational stipend from nursery to college under the welfare scheme”, Director of Tea Board, Agartala branch, KC Baishya told The Shillong Times here Sunday.
As per the scheme, they (children) will be financially supported with Rs. 20,000 as tuition fee and another Rs. 20,000 meant for food and accommodation. Besides, the stipend will be provided only for two children of each tea labourers.
Under the scheme, children of the tea workers having a knack for sports would be encouraged by giving Rs. 200 in cash per month for playing district-level for 2 years while the amount will be doubled if they participate in the state-level sports.
Only the national-level participants would be given Rs. 600 for 3 consecutive years. Later replying to the question about deficiency of laborers in the state which is perhaps, one of the reasons of declining tea industry, Baishya said that most of the tea factories have replaced labour with various machines to ease the whole work procedure.
He added that the Tea Board will visit each tea estate in the month of December to disseminate the information regarding Labour Welfare Scheme among the working labourers.
“The Tea Board has to jot down all the detailed information including number of labourers and their children. Later, the reports would be sent to the centre after estimating the amount of money to be sanctioned.” Baishya said.