JACTA skips Dispur, moves PM

GUWAHATI, Dec 18: Knowing the reality that they have all along been preaching to deaf ears on their various demands, including hike in daily wage of tea estate labourers up to Rs 350, the JACTA has skipped Dispur and moved straight to the Prime Minister with their demands.

Members of the Joint Action Committee of Tea Tribes Adivasi Assam, shortly called as JACTA, staged dhar in Delhi on Monday and submitted an 11-point memorandum to Prime Minister rendra Modi. Their demands include hike in daily wages of tea estate workers in Assam, both in Brahmaputra and Barak Valleys; review of the Plantation Labour Act, 1951; opposition to the move to grant citizenship to Hindu Bangladeshis in Assam; setting up of an autonomous council for the development of Tea Tribes and Adivasis; a separate commission for the study of their life and livelihood, protection of their rights in terms of reservation in various government departments; skill training to tea tribe youths so as to make them employable; immediate stop to the killing of Assamese people along the galand border; restoration of rations to tea  labourers; punishment to the guilty in the Bogidola TE shootout etc.

At present daily wages of tea workers in Assam are Rs 137 in the Brahmaputra Valley and Rs 115 in the Barak Valley, much less than the minimum daily wage fixed at Rs 350 by the Central Government. “We, therefore, have been demanding hike in the tea workers' daily wage up to Rs 350 in both the Barak and the Brahmaputra Valleys,” the JACTA said.