Wages of Assam tea workers meagre, welfare scheme implementation poor: CAG

Wages of tea garden workers in Assam are meagre, with several shortcomings and areas of concern in implementation of labour laws and worker welfare provisions, a recent Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) report has said. It also found the state government's intervention in fixing wages as per the Minimum Wage Act (MW Act) insufficient, noting that efforts to improve the lives of the workers have fallen short of making any substantial change. The performance audit on Implementation of Schemes for Welfare of Tea Tribe' for the period 2015-16 to 2020-21 maintained that low income and lack of education have been major barriers to the overall development of the workers in the state. The audit was performed in four zones Cachar, Dibrugarh, Nagaon and Sonitpur. There are 390 tea estates in the four sampled zones, of which 40 estates (10 per cent) were selected based on the size of the plantations and number of workers employed. Apart from scrutiny of records, the exercise included ...