April 19, 2007	Thursday	Rabi-us-Sani 01, 1428

COLOMBO: Once Sri Lanka’s sunshine crop and its top export earner, tea is no longer the answer to the country’s economic ills due to a serious shortage of plantation workers that began with the mass expulsion of ‘Indian Tamils’ in the 1960s.

In October 1964, India and Sri Lanka signed an accord under which 600,000 plantation workers called ‘Indian Tamils’ were repatriated in phases to India. Some 375,000 were granted Sri Lankan citizenship but, of these, a large number were resettled in the north and east of the island where ‘Sri Lankan Tamils’ were already predominant.

Among those who remained on the tea estates, the tradition of children of tea pluckers following in the profession was lost. With new opportunities available, the children of estate workers go to local universities and embark on careers like medicine. “I am not going to send my two children to the estate to work. I want them to be happy in better jobs,” says P. Jayarani from a hill country plantation in Hatton. “There is no dignity of labour in tea plantation work.”

S. Rajeswarie, another estate worker of Indian origin, wants her children out of the estates. “I have been working here for the last 13 years without any improvement in my life. I will not send my children to an estate to work even if they want to. I want a better life for them.”

Plantation officials say there is a growing reluctance on the part of the children of workers to follow their parents and grandparents who were brought to Sri Lanka by British planters during colonial rule, more than a century ago, from what is now Tamil Nadu in South India.

On top of that, the tea industry no longer attracts the best managerial talent. A couple of decades ago the cream of school-leavers from Colombo’s most prestigious schools joined plantations as junior managers and lived the high life in sprawling colonial bungalows with plenty of servants and a social life that revolved around the splendid clubhouses left behind by the British.

But colonial times were far different from the situation today with strong unionisation and greater awareness among workers of their rights — seen in the frequent strikes that young managers find hard to handle.

One option under discussion in some quarters to overcome the labour shortage is for companies to lease out plantation lots to workers, buy their leaf and only run the factories.

G. Rasaiah, senior vice-president of a regional branch of the Federation of Chambers of Commerce and Industry, says many youngsters want to further their education and learn computer skills and become proficient in English at institutes that have sprung up all over the hill country. —Dawn/The IPS News Service