Some 100-odd men and women are at the premises of Negheriting Tea Estate in Golaghat district on a Thursday afternoon. They are waiting to open bank accounts.

A team of four, led by Rahul Das, who runs a United Bank kiosk or Customer Service Point (CSP), from nearby Dergaon arrives with laptops and machines to take biometric details.

Taking advantage of the currency withdrawal restrictions that came with demonetisation, the Sarbananda Sonowal-led BJP government in Assam ordered that wages should not be paid in cash from January but instead transfered to bank accounts.

Some tea workers have accounts. But most don’t. The State divided the task of opening zero-balance financial inclusion accounts for all tea workers among the banks.

Negheriting is a small garden with only 350 permanent and 200 casual workers. Das says 200 accounts are already opened. He and his team are opening about 100 a day. The entire process will be over within a week.

Though the largest union Assam Cha Mazdoor Sangh (ACMS), affiliated to Congress, is not keen and is citing provisions in Payment of Wages Act, 1936 to insist on cash payment, workers are excited.

“Bank transaction would help us save some money,” says Bhutka Hazam, a fourth generation worker.

Assam contributes more than half of India’s total tea production of over 1,200 million kgs. The entire workforce is made up almost entirely of the tea tribe or “adivasis from Jharkhand, Odisha, Chhattisgarh”.

Brought mostly during the colonial rule, they form nearly one-sixth of Assam’s three crore population. A majority of them are still dependent on tea estates and the labour quarters they provide.

Additionally, the bank accounts should eliminate the practice of inflating wage bills — ‘ghost hazira’ — a source of easy money to management and unions and should enforce better monitoring on payment of workers’ dues.

According to a State disclosure, as on March 2014, nearly 30 per cent of the 792 estates in Assam defaulted provident fund contributions to the tune of ₹91 crore.

“The industry is decades behind time. Financial inclusion is the first step in improving the life of tea workers. We are geared to do more,” says Das.

Banking, telecom infra However, financial inclusion of nearly 12 lakh people spread over the length and breadth of the State, including some remote areas, is easy.

The poor tele-connectivity in the State adds to the problem as is evident in the slow progress of account opening.

As per latest records, only 50 per cent accounts could be opened in the last one month.

Though banks are already serving an estimated one crore accounts through the CSP network, the model is not adequate to pay wages to 10-12 lakh people every Friday and Saturday

The State government is aware of the hurdles. Its primary goal is to push the industry to open accounts for all workers, following which it will give the employers time for salary transfer.

But for the moment, it is insisting on a timetable to ensure that all stakeholders put in place the requisite infrastructure.

“We have given them a deadline, to maintain pressure. Else everyone will take it easy,” a source told BusinessLine .

Related Topics