Tea industry affected by chaos in the Russian Rouble
Will the volatility of foreign currency fluctuations abroad affect the tea industry in Sri Lanka as a whole?
Chairman of the Planters Association of Ceylon (PA), Roshan Rajadurai alerted the tea industry in Sri Lanka about a crisis following the chaos unfolding in Russia due to the ‘Rouble’ plunging down to lowest levels as the bulk of local tea is shipped to Middle Eastern countries and Russia.
Speaking at the UTZ tea certification process at an event in Colombo, he said the tea industry is facing another crisis as young persons who live in estates do not like to work as labourers as they prefer other type of employment elsewhere. In fact stake holders in the tea industry have seen the writing on the wall and have proposed different modules to retain workers as the tea industry is labour intensive and needs workers.
The PA chief said he was speaking in relation to regional companies but there were other smallholding tea companies that employ and look after more than one million persons.
He said following the nationalization of the tea estates in Sri Lanka in 1971 the government incurred losses amounting to billions of rupees which they later reverted to the private sector due to incurring losses. The tea plantations look after over one million persons living in estates of which only 200,000 persons belong to the workforce. “For each worker we support four additional persons and have constructed 26,000 new houses and upgraded 107 houses. 60 per cent of our workers now live in these upgraded houses.”
Referring to wages paid to estate employees, he said it was more than what was paid to workers in India and Kenya and other countries. Although no company was bound to follow certification, as planters they do it to enhance the quality of products and to safe guard the environment.
“We wholeheartedly support tea certification process to enhance the quality of the product,” he added.
Institute of Social Development’s Director P. Muthulingam said the UTZ certification of the tea industry was started in 2008 to enhance the quality of the tea plantation industry. There were other certification processes as well introduced two decades ago to uplift the quality of the tea industry. All certification processes focus on promoting sustainability of the tea industry and living conditions of estate workers. UTZ also focuses on quality apart from other factors such as environmental issues, etc. Every four years the UTZ Certification programme is revived to make the tea industry economically viable. As far as Sri Lanka was concerned there isn’t any forced labour or child labour on the estates.” He said, “What we are looking at is to provide a decent living standard to estate employees as the industry is not in a position to raise wages at the present juncture”.
Even countries such as USA, China Japan and Russia now seemed to be interested in promoting the UTZ concept. “The UTZ global conference on tea certification was held in Sri Lanka in 2013 where several new resolutions were adopted,” he said.
Junior Programme Officer Mario Pilz of the Swiss Labour Assistance (SAH) that assists the UTZ Certified programme also spoke.