Assam Pradesh Congress Committee (APCC) demands separate ministry for tea industry

STAFF REPORTER

GUWAHATI: The Assam Pradesh Congress Committee (APCC) has demanded the Centre to create a separate ministry to deal with various issues associated with the tea industry.

Addressing a press conference here on Saturday chairman of the Media department of APCC Bhagirath Karan said India is the second largest producer of tea in the world and around 2 crore people are directly and indirectly associated with the industry as labourer, employee, director, contractor, supplier, researcher, brokers etc.

“There are laws to run the tea industry in terms of production, sale, export, maintaining quality in domestic and international markets, rights of tea workers and payment of deserving wages. In order to such big industry we need a separate ministry at the Centre. When there can be ministries for coal and petroleum, there is no reason why the same cannot be created for tea,” Karan said.

Expressing serious concern over the present crisis faced by the tea industry due to stagnant prices, over production, imbalances between demand and supply and falling prices of teas in international markets, Karan accused both the Central government and Assam Government of not doing anything in the last four years to find out solutions for the crisis. He said it is a matter of serious concern that smaller countries like Kenya and Sri Lanka are dominating the global tea market.

Karan alleged that the small tea growers, who contribute 48 per cent of the total tea production in India, are not maintaining quality. He said these growers cultivate tea in government and forest lands without paying any revenue to the government. There are about 1.20 lakh small tea growers in Assam.

The APCC has alleged that there is mushrooming of bottling factories in Assam which randomly purchase green leave to produce and sell tea at cheap prices in markets. He alleged that these factories are running at their own whims and fancies giving a blow to the efforts to produce quality tea.

Karan also alleged that there is no transparency in the functioning of the Tea Board of India.

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