DIBRUGARH, July 15 - The Assam Chah Mazdoor Sangha (ACMS) today resolved to gherao all the Congress MLAs of the State including the Cabinet Ministers in protest against their silence over the deteriorating living conditions of thousands of people including women and children in the Assam Government owned Assam Tea Corporation Limited (ATCL).
In an emergency working committee meeting of the Assam Chah Mazdoor Sangha (ACMS) held at its head office at Jibon Phukan Nagar here, the trade union leaders discussed the prevailing pathetic situation in the fifteen tea estates of the ATCL and later passed a resolution to confront all the Congress MLAs who reaped votes from plantation workers from within their areas. The emergency meeting was presided over by veteran Congress leader, former Union Minister and ACMS president Paban Singh Ghatowar.
It needs to be mentioned here that the workers in the Assam Government owned ATCL gardens are paid only Rs 94 as daily wage when workers in other plantations of the State were being paid Rs 115. Moreover, the ATCL plantations have practically no medical, power or proper drinking water facilities. The workers and their dependents in these tea gardens look very much malnourished. Dileshwar Tanti, former Congress MLA and general secretary, ACMS said the living houses of the workersin the ATCL gardens were in a ramshackle stage as they have never been repaired for years.
Tanti further said that the Assam Tea Corporation Limited had not disbursed the Provident Fund and Gratuity to hundreds of retired workers of their plantation for more than a decade. The unpaid Provident Fund and Gratuity together amount to nearly Rs 120 crores. Several workers have also died without receiving their hard earned money. The workers in the ATCL gardens are also deprived of the ration (food grains at concessional rate), which is a part of the daily wages. If the undistributed rations are taken into account for the past ten years at the rate of Rs 14.20 per day, the Assam Government must pay each of the ATCL garden workers about Rs 45,000, the ACMS leader said. Ghatowar lamented that the condition of the workers and their families in the ATCL gardens had turned from bad to worst after coming of the Tarun Gogoi led State Government.
The gherao would be organised in the residences of all the Congress MLAs in their respective constituencies within next fifteen days. Former ACMS president and Deputy Speaker of the Assam Assembly Bhimananda Tanti, Parliamentary Secretary Jibontara Ghatowar, Assam Pradesh Congress Committee president Anjan Dutta, Cabinet Ministers � Atuwa Munda and Rockybul Hussain will also face the gherao, Tanti said.