Silchar, July 15: In a bid to break the impasse between the tea workers and the garden managements, the Intuc-affiliated Cachar Cha Sramik Union (CCSU) yesterday signed an agreement with the Consultative Committee of the Plantations? Association (CCPA) to fix the daily wages of the workers.
According to the agreement, the daily wages of the workers would be raised from the present Rs 38 to Rs 44.
The agreement will be implemented with retrospective effect from June 1.
The planters? association promised to hike the daily wages to Rs 46.25 after a few months.
The CCPA also agreed to pay the workers their arrears at a common rate of Rs 975 in instalments soon.
The workers and the planters in the south Assam gardens have been at loggerheads ever since the Indian Tea Association (ITA) and the Tea Association of India (TAI) refused to pay the workers on the basis of the bipartite agreement signed on 18 June, 2001.
The crisis intensified when the CCSU demanded implementation of the minimum wage notification for tea workers at the rate of Rs 48.50 a day, which was issued by the labour directorate on February 1 last year.
The tea planters? associations, however, claimed that they were unable to obey the directive because they were reeling under a severe funds crunch caused by the falling prices of tea.
At least three meetings organised between the two panels since last year failed to break the deadlock.
However, the CCPA had been able to extract a pledge from the CCSU that the labourers would work in a regular manner to effect ?a substantial increase in their output?.
After the latest agreement, south Assam tea industry?s financial burden from labour costs will increase by Rs 10 crore a year. There are over a lakh of workers in the 100-odd gardens of the Barak Valley.
The CCSU has said all varieties of tea produced in the Barak Valley were fetching higher prices than before at auctions.
Last night?s meeting was attended by Assam public health engineering (PHE) minister and general secretary of the CCSU, D.P. Goala, TAI secretary-general Kalyan Basu and ITA additional secretary Arijit Raha.