Tea workers at Srimangal in Sylhet, Bangladesh are spending their lives eating rice and rutti in the morning by eating tea leaves in the morning, dry bread at noon and chilies at night. After earning eight hours of hard work, a worker gets 23 kg of tea leaves every day and earning only 85 Taka as wages. In this money, the workers can not survive on their own, and their children are growing well. And due to lack of adequate food, the tea laborers and their family members are suffering from malnutrition.
AKM Shihab
During the British period, the workers' wages were first paid at Tk 21 a day, 28 Taka later, 48 Taka and 69 Taka and the last came to the wage of 85 Taka . Tea workers union leaders and tea workers have been moving for a long time to raise the wage for tea workers. Rama Bhajan, general secretary of Bangladesh Tea Workers Union, told daily daily that the salary structure of tea workers is very inhuman. They are hitting this salary but do not say it to survive. But we are going to negotiate with the owners.
Thinking about the cost of a family life of at least 4 members soon, we are going to demand a wage increase of workers' wages for 230 Taka . In the Sylhet town of Gandhidhara tea garden, there is also work to do the work of tea garden as well as other work for the workers. Workers said that they do not just work in tea gardens. To save lives, tea workers are collecting rubber gardens and selling them. By selling one-piece rubber wood they only get 20 pounds. But workers do not get the opportunity to collect timber until the finished work is done. Apart from this, some of the people still earn cows and goats.
It is known that there are 374 workers in the village of Gandhechara. Two rooms in one house in eight by eight. One of the kitchen In the meantime, a family of seven to eight members are climbing. The workers said that they went to work in the morning with dried chillies, tea-leaf fried. Khan dried bread at noon. And get a chance to eat only one-day rice every night. If you do not have money, you can not eat rice.
At the end of the day, a tea worker bought Tk 2, two kg of rice from 85 Taka , 10 grams of lentil, 10 kilograms of turmeric and pepper. The remaining Tk 30 is spent on oil, salt or anything else. Workers said they got the opportunity to buy and buy the lowest costly silverware fish in the market once in two weeks. In the house once a month, the tea workers are actually feeding cockroaches in their homes. But it's also luxury for them. Workers said, "We do not steal even if we have trouble. Workers are right. Workers said that they work in the gardens starting from 8am to 4pm. After eight hours of work, every day a worker has to collect 23 kg of tea leaves. After that, he was given a wage of 85 Taka . Apart from this, a worker gets three and a half pounds for every teaspoon of tea per kilogram. If the page is less than 20 kilos, then the wages are paid less than eighty Taka . Again, in some gardens day 23 kg tea leaves are being collected, but workers are given wages in exchange for collecting 24 kg leaves. One worker called evening queen said, we have to work eight hours of work. One day, one of the other sisters, asking for permission to eat a little bit of betel leaf, Sardar said to him negative.
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