CAG report cites 'meagre' wages, poor use of labour laws for Assam tea workers

Wages of tea garden workers in Assam are “meagre”, with “several shortcomings and areas of concern” in implementation of labour laws and worker welfare provisions, a recent Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) report has said.

It also found the state government’s intervention in fixing wages as per the Minimum Wage Act (MW Act) “insufficient”, noting that efforts to improve the lives of the workers have “fallen short” of making any substantial change.

The performance audit on ‘Implementation of Schemes for Welfare of Tea Tribe’ for the period 2015-16 to 2020-21 maintained that low income and lack of education have been major barriers to the overall development of the workers in the state.

The audit was performed in four zones — Cachar, Dibrugarh, Nagaon and Sonitpur. There are 390 tea estates in the four sampled zones, of which 40 estates (10 per cent) were selected based on the size of the plantations and number of workers employed.

Apart from scrutiny of records, the exercise included interviews of 590 workers in the selected estates. The report said the Tea Tribes Welfare Department (TTWD) tried to address the issues of the workers, but without basic socio-economic data, and their initiatives were implemented “haphazardly”.

“The wages the workers received in the tea estates were meagre,” the report said, pointing out that the Assam government did not fix the minimum pay as per the MW Act, 1948.

It also said that workers were not a part of scheduled employments notified by the state government, as a result of which they do not get benefits of minimum wage standard and variable dearness allowance.

The secretary, Labour and Welfare Department, informed the CAG that when the state government came out with initiatives to increase pay as per the MW Act, it got challenged in the court and hence, the wages could not be increased as desired.

The report also underlined the disparity of wages among workers of Barak and Brahmaputra Valley, and said the Labour Department “could not provide any justification” for it.

It said workers in the Barak Valley have been receiving “at least 10 per cent lower” wage rates than the Brahmaputra Valley workers, with the government never intervening to address the issue.

The report said that as per the 2019 wage rates, tea workers of Assam were being paid the least wages compared to other tea-producing states like Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Karnataka and West Bengal.

It noted that though wages to tea workers are paid partly in cash and partly in kind in Assam, the authorisation granted by the government for such an arrangement is not available on record.

“The Labour Department was also not aware about the year of commencement of payment of wages in kind and the purpose for the state,” the report said.

The list of qualified items to be paid in kind was neither prescribed by the government nor was the system for calculating the cost of these items, it said, adding, the payment of wages in cash or in kind was “not in compliance with provisions” of the MW Act.

The CAG report also said the Assam Tea Employees Labour Welfare Board did not undertake any mandated welfare activities, and 85 per cent of the expenses borne for it during 2015-20 are related to administrative expenses.

During 2015-16 to 2020-21, the director, TTWD, had planned 187 welfare schemes with a budget of Rs 600.19 crore, out of which actual implementation was carried out in only 82 schemes at a cost of Rs 210.65 crore against the budget allotment of Rs 365.60 crore, it said.

The budget speeches from 2015-16 to 2019-20 had mention of 25 schemes under the TTWD, out of which nine were not implemented due to non-receipt of funds.

The TTWD claimed that lack of adequate field staff was an issue resulting in shortcomings in the implementation of schemes, which was also observed by the auditors.

“However, such constraints were not new for the Department, rather these shortcomings persisted since the inception of the TTWD (1984) and should have been addressed long back,” it said.

Shortcomings in facilities such as hospitals, schools, canteen, creche, recreation club and housing accommodation as compared to the specifications notified by the state government were also observed by the auditors.