GUWAHATI, April 9 - Principal opposition Congress has called upon the government to declare a special economic package for the tea industry to help it tide over the crisis brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic and the nationwide lockdown.
State Congress president Ripun Bora on Wednesday submitted a memorandum to Chief Minister Sarbananda Sonowal highlighting various issues in the context of the situation in Assam.
�The government must declare some economic package for the tea industry, which has been badly affected and it must ensure regular wage and ration to all tea sector workers during the lockdown period. The government should also improve the health and sanitization facilities in the tea gardens on a priority basis,� Bora said.
The party also demanded a package to compensate thousands of small tea growers and rubber growers. It also called for supply of diesel to the farmers of Assam at a subsidized rate.
The party demanded that NFSA rice or the special rice at the rate of 5 kg with 1 kg lentil and other schemes as per the economic packages of the Central and State governments should not be confined among the listed BPL families or NFSA card holders only.
�All daily wage earners, people working in shops, hotels and such other private establishments, rickshaw- and handcart-pullers, carpenters, barbers, cobblers, washermen, fishermen, tailors, Ola-Uber drivers and drivers of other private vehicles, and all such workers of the unorganized sectors, who are the worst sufferers at this moment, should be provided relief immediately,� stated Bora.
Accusing the ruling party of adopting a discriminatory attitude in selection of beneficiaries for the packages announced by the Central and the State governments, Bora said that the government should be above party politics at this crisis hour.
