By Lankesh Gooneratne
Sri Lanka’s tea industry is almost synonymous with the Tamils of Indian origin, living and working in the sprawling tea plantations in the picturesque up-country region. Descending from the workers brought here by the British colonizers as indentured labourers from South India, the life of these people is one of abject poverty and utter misery.
Also known as Indian Tamils, they were first brought here in 1823 and ever since, they have been toiling in tea, rubber and coconut plantations, with minimum facilities under near inhuman conditions.
The Indian Tamils were, from the inception, a disenfranchised lot. They were brought here as labourers but were not granted basic human rights. By the time Ceylon was granted Independence from the British on 1948, in the Upcountry region, around 1 million out of the 8 million total Tamil population were living in poverty.
Living conditions
The Indian Tamils were brought to Sri Lanka as indenture labourers, in other words, their plight was not so dissimilar to that of slaves. These South Indian Tamils were first condemned to slavery under the British, and after Independence in 1948 it was passed to the Sinhalese to master the Upcountry Tamils.
However, the living conditions of the Upcountry Tamils are unacceptable because each family of ten or twelve people live in a single room in ‘line’ houses.
Also, sanitary facilities are dreadful as each ‘line’ of rooms has a common toilet and a common tap, and both men and women have to utilize the common toilet.
There are dispensaries with unqualified dispensers. This can escalate into a massive health hazard in the near future, as the treatments offered by such dispensaries are mostly ineffective. Sadly, so far, health authorities have not paid sufficient attention to this issue.
The education level among the Indian Tamils is abysmal. In most schools in the plantation region, the classes are conducted only up to 4th or 5th Garde.
Upcountry Tamil leaders
For many decades, the fate of the Indian Tamils rested in the hands of Saumiyamoorthy Thondaman. Young Thondaman first entered politics six decades ago. He was the founder of Ceylon Workers’ Congress (CWC), which was first established as Ceylon Indian Congress (CIC), formed in 1939. In 1950, the CIC changed its name to the Ceylon Workers’ Congress and became the largest trade union in the country. As president of the Ceylon Indian Congress, he contested the Nuwara Eliya seat at the 1947 general election and won.
The Upcountry Tamil were living in difficult situations and the successive Sinhalese-dominated governments continued to neglect them. Therefore, it fell to Thondaman and his trade union to win demands, most of the time with threats of strikes.
No political support
Housing is one of the most pressing issues of the Indian Tamils. During the Rajapaksa regime several housing projects were implemented. They are yet to be completed. Currently, there are about 80 houses have neared completion but these are not nearly enough to house the 1 million Indian Tamils living in the Upcountry region.
However, no new housing projects have been initiated so far.
The houses that have already been built are two-bedroom houses, but toilet facilities are still an issue. The houses do not come with toilet facilities. Instead, there are two or three toilets to a set of houses.
According to Minister of Plantations Navin Dissanayake, he is unable to do much for the people living in the plantation due to certain restrictions imposed on his ministry, sources revealed.
He says openly that the plantation industry lacks investments for developments and some of the efforts he has made in trying get subsidies for the people have failed.
He has also tried to increase the price of 1 kg of tea from its current price of Rs 60. Sources also revealed that tea planters are not able to cover the total cost of production with the price of Rs 60 per 1 kg of tea.
Issue of citizenship
When the British left Ceylon in 1948, the fate of the Indian Tamil workers was hanging in the balance. In 1964, the Sirima-Shasthri Pact was signed to determine the status of the Indian Tamils in Sri Lanka. Accordingly, Ceylonese citizenship was granted to 300,000, and 525,000 were repatriated to India. But, there were still a vast number of stateless people living in the up-country region. By the 1990s most of them had been given Sri Lankan citizenship.
However, despite these efforts, even today, there remain a number of people who do not possess a national identity card issued by the Government of Sri Lanka.
According to Minister of National Co-Existence, Dialogue and Official Languages, Mano Ganesan, increasing the daily wages of the plantation workers has been pending for the last 18 months because wages are increased due to a collective agreement.
The agreement is signed after every two years and the last was signed in March 2015.
In addition, the collective agreements are signed between the plantation companies and the trade unions, Ganesan added.
When the agreement in March 2015 was signed between the trade unions and the plantation companies, the trade unions requested an increment of Rs 1,000.
He further pointed out that although 18 months have passed since signing the agreement, this increment has not realized.
Ganesan further said, as a policy, he and Minister Palani Digambaram are against collective agreements. “But, we show our fullest support towards the needs of the trade unions.”
He also pointed out, during this ongoing issue Arumugam Thondaman has been out of action for almost ten months, which is a very irresponsible move.
“Having such a heavy responsibility he passed the ball to us and not even showing an inch of concern towards the workers. We were able to bring up this issue in Cabinet and to Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe,” he said.
They have agreed to provide an intermediary allowance of Rs 2,500 for each tea estate worker.
Courtesy:Ceylon Today