Tea and lack of empathy

For years, even before our country received independence, it was the income from the tea industry which formed the backbone of our country’s economy. Even after independence, it was the income from tea that provided the main export earnings that kept the economic wheels of the country turning.

Even today tea provides the third highest portion of the Lankan economy behind the earnings of expatriate workers and the textile trade.

Sri Lanka’s tea export earnings crossed US $ 1 billion for the first time in history in 2008. Sri Lanka is the first country to achieve this feat.  

During the financial year 2022 to 2023, according to the Sri Lanka Export Development Board, export earnings from tea made up 12% of merchandise exports, an increase of 3.57 % year-on-year (Y-o-Y) to US$ 111.12 Mn in December 2023 compared to December 2022. 

This is despite a drop in production in 2022 because of the industry being hit by a fertiliser shortage caused by an ill-advised agrochemical ban.

During the current year (January to April 2024) earnings from the export of tea rose by 10.44% Y-o-Y to $ 450.23 million. In rupee terms, the export of tea earned 411.09 billion rupees. Auction houses said this is the highest-ever earnings in terms of the local currency in a calendar year.

Unfortunately however, despite the mega earnings the export of tea has brought to our country and the profits realised to plantation owners -whether they be major companies or medium and smallholders, the people whose labour makes possible these major earnings receive but a pittance of a wage.

Workers are housed in quarters which late Finance Minister Ronnie de Mel described as unfit for human habitation. Again the wages workers receive is a distortion of the ILO’s prerequisite that workers be paid a Living Wage.
The Department of Health Services of 2016/17 reveals that 57 percent of the estate sector households do not have access to a safe drinking water facility, while 21 percent do not have access to sanitary toilet facilities.

The Household Income and Expenditure Survey (HIES) shows 64.6 percent of the estate sector households are among the poorest 40 percent of  households in the country. It adds that the monthly per capita income for the estate sector at the time was around Rs. 8,566, when compared to the national average of Rs.16,377.
Today, an estate worker receives a monthly wage of Rs. 1,000 per day, dependent on the number of kilograms picked per day. Making matters worse workers are often not offered daily work. Their take-home salary is therefore around Rs. 22,000 to Rs 26,000 per month.

Today, it costs over Rs. 100,000 for a family of four to have two nutritious meals a day. Even if both parents on an estate receive work every day of the month, they will not be able to provide their families with the necessary food intake.

Not strangely, World Bank studies have revealed a stunting rate of 36 percent in the estate sector, while the wasting (16%) and underweight rates were 36%. 

It was in these circumstances President Wickremesinghe announced that the wage of estate workers would be increased to Rs. 1,700 per day from May this year. 

The President’s announcement was met with howls of protests from estate management. The Planters’ Association of Ceylon (PA) has strongly opposed the government’s wage hike of Rs. 1700 for plantation sector workers and condemned what it referred to as the Government’s arbitrary, reckless and unilateral decision.

What the PA has failed to do is to explain why the industry, in the past thirty years has not been able to pay its workers a living wage, despite growing income and profitability.

It is reported the management companies refused to sit down together with the government and the trade unions to discuss how workers could be paid a living wage in keeping with the value of the work they perform.
This is tantamount to arrogance. These bosses  pay themselves extremely high salaries while paying workers wages which do not provide even a nutritious meal.

According to ‘salary.com’ the average income of an Estate Manager is around US $200,906 /year!