Assam government to set up study centre for tea tribe students

Kolkata: The Assam government will set up a state-level academic study centre for students hailing from the tea community.

Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi, who is on campaign mode for the assembly elections in April, met a delegation of the Assam Tea Tribes Students’ Association (ATTSA) last week and discussed a range of issues concerning the community.

In an hour-long meeting with Prahlad Gowala, president of ATTSA, it was decided to open study centres in the subdivisions as well as district headquarters for the benefit of students of the tea communities.

“The government wants all-round development of the tea communities who are living in Assam for decades as this community is playing an inseparable role in strengthening the composite culture of Assam,” Gogoi told Gulf News over phone.

“Development of tea tribes will lead to a developed Assam and it is the foremost duty of the government to bolster their development,” the chief minister added.

Gogoi also said the state government is set to announce a fixed wage for tea workers, which will be higher than the current wage as all the formalities in this regard have been completed. Recently, the state government has proposed a tea tribe commission to address all the areas concerning the community such as health, nutrition and employment of the tea tribes.

The state government is also looking into the demands of the tea workers that include creation of a special package for revival of 15 gardens under the Assam Tea Corporation (ATC), setting up a hospital in the tea gardens falling under the ATC, ration for tea workers.

The tea tribe as they are known in Assam, are the descendants of people who were brought by the British colonial planters as indentured labourers from the Chhota Nagpur Plateau region into Assam during 1860-90s in multiple phases for the purpose of being employed in the tea gardens industry as labourers.

The total population of the community is estimated to be around 6 million or about 20 per cent of the state’s population.

Opposition party, chiefly the Bharatiya Janata Party, has termed these commitments of the chief minister as gimmickry ahead of the elections. “He [Gogoi] has been chief minister for three consecutive times, why didn’t he do all these earlier. The demands for upliftment of the community have been there since ages but the government had done nothing in the last 15 years,” former Congress party leader Hemant Biswas, who is now with the BJP, said.

There is widespread resentment among the community against the government not only due to lack of facilities but the ill treatment that the society has treated them. “We are modern day slaves where people remember us only during elections. All throughout the year we are left to rot in inhuman condition. So many governments had promised but none delivered,” said Bhupen Putha, a member of the tea tribe.