Tea planters in Tamil Nadu have termed the recent hike in wages for tea plantation workers in the neighbouring state of Kerala as unworkable and said that it would not augur well for the sustenance of the industry.

Referring to the wage agreement of Rs 301 arrived at for the workers in Munnar in Kerala, United Planters Association of Southern India Chairman N Dharmaraj today said this was “unnatural and unworkable”, since 60 per cent of the cost of production in plantation industry was labour cost.

In his address to the 62nd conference of Planters’ Association of Tamil Nadu (PAT) here, Dharmaraj claimed that the agreement was arrived at in a suspicious manner and the Kerala government should get to its root, to know the reality.

The silence of the Central and State governments on the inter-ministerial committee recommendation for sharing of social costs incurred by plantations has only aggravated the situation, PAT Chairman, Suresh Menon, said.

The industry was currently plagued by a severe financial crisis, arising out of spiralling cost of production, under recovery of prices, stiff international competition in the export markets and shortage of labour, Menon said.

He said uniformity in sales tax would pave the way for better price realisation for all segments of the tea sector.

He said Tamil Nadu government should abolish the ’discriminatory’ VAT sales tax rate of five per cent on tea sold by corporate tea factories, as against the just one per cent for teas sold by bought-leaf tea factories and INDCOSERVE, a government run factory.

The proposal of the Centre to declare practically whole extents in the Western Ghats as ‘Ecologically Sensitive Area (ESA) was objectionable, he said.

An approach similar to the one adopted by Kerala, whereby lands on the Western ghats cultivated with plantation an agricultural crops have been excluded from the purview of ESA, should be followed in the case of Tamil Nadu also, he said.

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