Himalayan News Service

Moran, March 25:

Tea planters in Assam are becoming increasingly shaky with garden workers continuing to launch fatal attacks on them for non-payment of wages and other trivial issues. The latest attack took place Thursday when a group of workers clubbed to death Dwijen Bora, owner

of the Dhekari Nepali tea garden in eastern Assam’s Dibrugarh district, 430 km from the state’s main city of Guwahati. “Some workers engaged by the planter did not report for duty and when Bora went to enquire about their absence, the group attacked him with crude implements and killed him,” said Dibrugarh district police chief Pradip Chandra Saloi. Soon after the news spread about the planter’s death, villagers attacked the workers’ colony and torched at least a dozen houses. “The situation is tense but under control. We have placed adequate security personnel in the area and arrested four workers suspected to be involved in the attack,” Saloi said.

The killing of Bora comes less than a month after another planter in eastern Assam’s Golaghat

district was attacked by garden workers with spears and machetes. They later threw his body in a blazing fire. At least half a dozen tea planters have been killed by angry workers in Assam during the past three years on charges of non-payment of wages, no rations, and lack of healthcare facilities. Some dozen planters were assaulted by workers for similar reasons.

“The industry is facing a crisis and the workers are getting violent. Under such circumstances, it is really difficult to continue working in the gardens,” said H P Sharma, a planter. There are an estimated one million workers spread over Assam’s 800-odd gardens. Up to 70 plantations in Assam have closed down in recent years with India’s $1.5 billion tea industry facing a crisis with prices dropping in the weekly auctions, besides a slump in export figures. India is the world’s largest tea producer with Assam accounting for about 55 percent of the total 825 million kg produced in 2004.