ABOUT THE PLANTATION COMMUNITIES IN SRI LANKA AND THEIR MAJOR ISSUES

PLANTATION COMMUNITY IN SRI LANKA AND THEIR MAJOR ISSUES

ABOUT THE PLANTATION COMMUNITY

The Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka formerly known as Ceylon is a pear shaped tiny island located in the Indian Ocean about twenty eight kilometers off the South-eastern coast of India. Sri Lanka has a population of about twenty one million in which Sinhalese makes up seventy four percent of the population and are concentrated in the densely populated Southwest. Sri Lankan Tamils, whose South Indian ancestors have lived  on the island for several centuries, are about twelve percent of the total population live who throughout the country and predominantly present in the Northern Province of the island. Indian Tamils, a distinct ethnic group, also known as plantation Tamils represent about five percent of the population. The British brought them to Sri Lanka in the nineteenth century as estate laborers to work initially in a coffee plantation and then later in tea, rubber plantations. They remain concentrated in the "tea country" of South-central Sri Lanka.

The labour law in Sri Lanka was discussed in 1840s during the British colonial period where was the coffee plants had been destroyed by an unidentified fungus and it was replaced with tea as a commercial crop in 1867 by Mr. James Tailor, whom was the citizen of Scotland and succeed in planting tea instead of coffee and his first tea production was marketed in Sri Lanka in 1872 at Kandy city.

As follow the other land owners also started to plant tea by replaced the coffee in a bigger scale.  Tea production was developed as biggest economic market in Sri Lanka in 1890s.  The labour shortage was raised up as a major issue to meet the demand, and the local manpower was inefficient to meet and fulfil the demand and supply at that time.  So they decided to bring labour from south India by introduce the system of ‘Tundus’ which was used as visa to enter into the country for employment and ‘Kanganies’ (Agent) the name of the person who had contact to bring labours from south India was given the Tundus to supply labours.   There were number of people had come from south India and travel (by foot) from the north part to the central part of Sri Lanka and while walking there are number of people who died due to fever and dearie.    All of them recruited as labour and they were provided with a small house call line rooms and they were supplied with basic food, cloths, bed sheets etc. And treated as slaveries by the owners and only expected to take maximum output a day.

The contacts for hire and service ordinance No. 5 of 1841 was introduce as first ordinance for Labour Law in Sri Lanka based on hiring contract labour for the said Plantations.  Under this ordinance the ‘Kanganies’ had authority to bring labour from India and supplied to the British Plantation owners.   The labours those who had brought are employed as Male for cleaning, planting, manuring and Female was used especially for plucking.   The working hour was nearly 12 and the female had to work for 12 hours and Male for 08 hours.

SOCIO-ECONOMIC STATUS OF THE PLANTATION COMMUNITY IN CENTRAL PROVINCE

The bulk of the Indian Tamil plantation workers in Sri Lanka were drawn from the most depressed and lowest caste groups in South India. While this may be an artefact of great poverty among such groups at the time when the colonial masters were recruiting such laborers from 1840s, onwards, it appears that the colonial masters and the employers of such laborers were deliberately looking for those from the relevant caste groups in their search for a pliant work force due to their firm stereotypical views about race and caste of workers.

Over seventy five per cent of the Indian Tamil workers represent the lowest levels in the South Indian caste hierarchy, but interestingly those in supervisory grades were selected from among the higher status. Even though opting the plantation work force would have produced a levelling influence on people from different caste backgrounds, this has not happened for over hundred and fifty years. The colonial system and the plantations imposed many restrictions on the Indian Tamil plantation workers in order to keep them under harsh living conditions and minimum worker benefits within the plantation workforce.

The Sinhala and, to some extent, Tamil nationalists movements in Sri Lanka treated them as an immigrant group with no local roots and mere interlopers brought in by the colonial masters. As an ethnic minority in post-independence Sri Lanka, the Indian Tamils lost their citizenship rights and a pro-gram me for repatriation to send a significant number of them back to India was initiated in the 1960s. One could argue that the “Untouchables” became “Touchable” within the plantation economy as members of lower castes worked and lived side by side with higher caste people within the plantations. There was however some degree replication of caste or even “an invention of caste” within the plantation economy as workers hierarchy broadly conformed to the caste system and some services such as sanitary work, washing of cloths etc. were extracted on the caste basis. However at present most of the population in estates engaged working in estates

EDUCATION AND RELATED ISSUES OF THE PLANTATION COMMUNITY

Education is the main factor that determines the social status of a development process of an individual as well as a community. It transforms people psychologically, socially and culturally. The plantation community is one of the marginalized groups that are more vulnerable in educational achievements. Due to the poor education facilities and lack of qualified teachers students have to depend on private tuition classes due to the poor financial situations at home it is very hard to find t fees to the tuition classes and the students are discouraged to follow the higher education.

The comparison of literacy rates with national level showed that the plantation community was only 76.9% while the national average was 92.4%. Similarly, only 20.2% of the plantation population has a secondary education and only 2.1% of them had a post-secondary education. The comparable figures for the all island are 52.2 and 20.7% respectively. More than half (55.9%) of the plantation population had only primary education. A few of them had entered into the university system (Treasures of the Education System in Sri Lanka, 2005).

The state of public education was outlined in a report by the Sahaya Foundation, a non-governmental group, in 2007: “Statistics indicate that of the school age children in the plantation sector, only 58 percent attend up to completion of primary schooling and only 7 percent of students who pass Ordinary Level (10th grade) proceed to Advanced level studies. Less than 1 percent of the students who complete their Advanced Level Exam actually make it to university (less than ten a year).”

The report continued: “Reasons for the dropout rate are a culmination of extreme poverty, lack of awareness as to the importance of education, and lack of parental motivation. Furthermore, the schools in question do not have sufficient resources to ensure attendance.”

According to a 2007 World Bank assessment, the country’s official literacy rate in 2003-2004 was 92.5 percent, but for the plantation sector was 81.3 percent. In the case of women, the island-wide literacy rate was 90.6 percent, but was 74.7 percent for the plantation sector.

The dropout rate for the estate sector is high—averaging 18% percent at grade five as compared to just 1.4 percent for the whole country. According to education ministry data, the male transition rate from primary to secondary level in the Numara Eliya district is far lower than other districts. Many boys are compelled to join the workforce.

Public schools throughout the country, including in Colombo, are poorly resourced—lacking qualified teachers, science laboratories, proper buildings and playgrounds. But the conditions facing students in Colombo and the plantation districts are worlds apart.

There is an acute lack of teachers in the estate areas. According to 2007 records, the student-to teacher-ratio was 1:45 as compared to 1:22 for the island as a whole. This translates into far larger class sizes, cramped conditions and overworked teachers.

Proposed intervention- as mentioned above Education is the main factor that determines the social status of a development process of an individual as well as a community. It transforms people psychologically, socially and culturally it the responsibility of everyone to educate the society which will empower everyone individually and collectively for an example providing IT/Technical Knowledge.

HEALTH RELATED ISSUES OF THE PLANTATION COMMUNITY IN CENTRAL PROVINCE

The indicators of health and nutrition are another source which reflects the backward and neglected nature of the plantation community. The percentage of undernourished children below the age group of five years in the plantation sector was 38.9% whereas the percentage of the rural and the urban sector were lower and they were 21.8 and 12.8% respectively. Infant mortality in the sector was 60.6% while the national rate was only 25.3% and still birth rate is 20% in the plantation sector.

The plantation health sector is still not integrated with the national health stream and it is treated as a separate entity. As a result, national health policies and health programmes are not fully covering the plantation community.

Plantation human development trust (PHDT) is the institution handling the entire health services of the plantation sector. Estate hospitals are not equipped with

the necessary facilities. Lack of qualified doctors, qualified health staffs and lack of medicine, indoor treatment facilities are the major problems faced by the estate health service.

Proposed intervention- Producing more doctors so that they can provide basic medical Facilities in low cost and pressuring governmental and non-governmental organizations to build hospitals in the local area.

HOUSING, WATER SUPPLY AND SANITATION RELATED ISSUES

The plantation sector has its own identical housing patterns known as line rooms, introduced by the colonial planters. The line rooms are barrack type structured with two hundred sq. feet for an entire family, with hardly any ventilation, no privacy for grown-up children & women. yet overcrowding due to larger families with their dependent parents. In the plantation sector, 185,533 families consists the population of 777,730 who lives in 163,580 housing units/line rooms.

Most of these line rooms are more than100 years old and seventy percent of them lives in dilapidated conditions. The percentage of self-owned houses among the plantation community is estimated to be low as 10.2 and others who live in the line rooms owned by the plantation companies. Nearly, 1families  do not have even line rooms they live in temporary huts.

However, as a result of various housing programmes implemented by the different organization 45,000 new housing units were constructed and some of the old line rooms were upgraded. However, given the large number of unsuitable housing units in the plantation sector the challenges behind the provision of decent houses for the plantation community is enormous. With regard to the provision of drinking water and sanitation 90 and 62% of the needs of the estate sector are met respectively due to Donors, NGOs and Government interventions.

But still 74% of the estate households use common taps and 15.5% use common well for drinking water. While nearly 25%of the households use latrines, another 25% do not have access to latrine facilities. After the re-privatization in 1992.Government Agencies and NGOs had interest to improve the water supply and sanitation conditions, but the problem still prevails in higher level compare to the other sectors (Status of Workers Housing in Plantations, 2004).

Proposed intervention: Empowering the families to have own house and facilities and pressuring government for own lands and basic infrastructures.

Employment related Issues:

Labour force participation rate in the estate sector is around 45%. The sector also characterized by high labour force participation rate (43.4 percent) among females compare to the other sectors. However, in the recent years the labour force participation rate of the sector is decreasing due to the emerging trend of greater emphasis on education over employment at a relatively younger generation. However there is a decline in the participation of female in labour force from 47.6% in 1986/87 to 45% in 1996/97 in the plantation sector.

Out of the total active persons in the plantation community 80.6% are employed while the unemployment rate is 19% overall. But the unemployment rate among the younger generation is 70.5%. While 7.5% of the working people have permanent employment the others which are 28.7 percent are temporarily employed and 3.1% are self-employed.

On the other hand, only 9.1% of the plantation people have subsidiary occupations. Unemployment is an acute socio- economic as well as development problem because of its relationship to the poverty and human development.

Unemployment has been identified as an emerging problem among the plantation youth especially after privatization of the plantations in 1992. Among all the plantation youth, the unemployment rate is 38.63% but it is 50.6% among the educated youth. Of the working youth only 43.67% have permanent employment and the balance engaged in temporary or casual works (Labor Force.

It is also noteworthy to explain that among the working youth only twenty five are satisfied with their present jobs while 67.75% are not satisfied. The reasons for dis- satisfaction are low wage, lack of incentives, low states of job, lack of promotional aspects, lack of social security benefits etc. The higher poverty line defined by the Department of Census and Statistics revealed that nearly 80% of the plantation households lie below the poverty line. The income of plantation workers household is determined mainly by five sectors such as daily wage rate which is determine by the collective agreement, the number of days of work offered to them by the estate management, the number of days they actually worked, non-plantation work income that they are able to earn and number of income receives in the household. From the inception of the plantations, the managements have maintained a low wage mechanism in order to ensure chief labor and higher profit. Because of this mechanism, they receive very low level of wage in the country compare to the workers in the other sectors. The current salary of an estate worker is Rs1000.00. which is very low to manage with the current economic crisis in Sri Lanka.

Proposed Intervention: with the support of the government and non-government organizations support creating more job opportunities and self-employments for men and women for a sustainable development.

CHILD PROTECTION AND CHILD LABOUR RELATED ISSUES

Although there is a slight improvement in schooling among the plantation children, child labor and child protection bound to be one of the serious issues. A study conducted by Vijesandiran for centre on plantation study showed that among the plantation children below eighteen years old, 28.82% had engaged in child labour. The child labour rate is high among the female (33.55%) compare to the male children (22.58%). Poverty and poor education facilities are found to be the major causes of child labour problem. It is observed that parents are compelled to send their children to work as avenue to cope with poverty incidence.

Due to the poverty issues in families most of the children effected by Malnutrition, mothers have to go to estates for work and children are looked after at the day care centers. A child doesn’t get a mothers love during the child hood at the day care centers in some places children are mostly communicated and taught by not in their mother tongue  and they get the pre school education in their second language and this effects in their pre schools and making the student a slow learner. There is a high demand of well-trained preschool teachers who can teach in their mother tongue.

Proposed Intervention: Creating Child care centers with all the basic arrangements so that a child can grow happily which will fit their future needs.

ALCOHOLISM /GAMBLING/DRUGS/SUICIDE AND YOUTH RELATED ISSUES

In addition to this, it is also observed that there is an increasing trend in alcohol habit among the members of the plantation community. There is nearly 60% of the plantation workers consume alcohol and they spend 6.6% of their total income on alcohol and 6.7% of their income on Tobacco and Beetle. Alcoholism is seen as two aspects in relation to poverty in the plantation community (Household Income and Expenditure Survey, 2003). One is that the alcoholism is one of the major causes for higher poverty incidence and the other one is that it is the result of the higher level of human poverty which prevails in the community. In 2002, 53 years after independence from the British and more than fifteen years after the large privately owned tea plantations were declared as state corporations and again after the 1995/96 privatization of plantations, female wage earnings continued to be handed over to the males.

This effectively carries on historically established norms of gender discrimination. Management personnel confirmed earlier observations that frequent family conflicts arise because men tends to waste the wages of their wives or other females on alcohol and gambling.

And it has been a major problem with the youth of the central province is taking drugs which leads to dropping out from schools and wasting time without engaging any employments. Yet there is an increment of crimes and robberies murders, suicides etc.. It is very important to keep

Proposed intervention: every youth engaged in activities which will benefit them individually as well as collectively such as engaging in skill development through using digital literacy.

Status of Women and related issues: Sri Lanka has attracted much attention as a country in which women are unusually favorable in society and in political field when compared to other countries of the SAARC region but the plantation women have been neglected and marginalized by development programs. Plantation women’s work has been undervalued and underestimated.

The economic contribution to women has not been fully recognized. The plantation woman tends to have multiple roles. Women have double burden as income earners and as care-takers. As a result, they do not have leisure time on a normal working day. Estate women are vulnerable to the oppressive economic and social structures which exist in the system that has continued to be their subordinate for over a century.

Women’s subordination is rooted in patriarchy, in the plantation families, decision making on major issues like education of children, their employment and marriage, handling of the household authority structure of the family is been decided by the husband. Women form the majority among trade union subscribers but not even 1% of the position in the decision making level is shared by them. The isolated life led by them in the estate is another issues, most of them do not know any world beyond their estate. Female literacy rate remain lower in plantation sector than in the other sector and the school dropout rate of females remains high. It has been recorded that only 53% of female children actually complete primary schooling, 24% attends secondary school and only 4% remain until GCE ‘O’ level.

Women working as tea pluckers form the single largest segment of the plantation workforce in Sri Lanka. The smooth operation of factory-based tea processing is heavily dependent on the skillfulness and efficiency of the tea pluckers who brings in the green tea leaf. The female workers are economically far more important than male workers. Until 1978, however, female laborers were paid 20% less than male laborers. In 1978 the government passed legislation to increase and equalize plantation wages for all labor categories, thus removing the wage anomaly between male and female plantation labor that had existed in the sector since its beginning in the mid- nineteenth century.

According to the office records of plantations, female workers earn relatively higher incomes than men, but evidence suggests that they neither handle nor manage their earnings. To start with, the female workers do not collect their own wages. Women's wages are routinely handed over to the males (husbands/ fathers) by the management and this practice was originated in the mid nineteenth century, when the Indian Tamil labor gangs, consisting entirely of families were brought to the newly opened plantations in the island from southern India.

In 2002, 53 years after independence from the British and more than fifteen years after the large privately owned tea plantations were declared as state corporations and again after the 1995/96 privatization of plantations, female wage earnings continued to be handed over to the males.

This effectively carries on historically established norms of gender discrimination. Management personnel confirmed earlier observations that frequent family conflicts arise because men tends to waste the wages of their wives or other females on alcohol and gambling.

In the view of management, however, women do have the opportunity to collect their own wages, since there is a compulsory work stoppage when wage payments are made. Plantation workers are paid twice a month and although there is a work stoppage on the formal payday, the vast majority of the women tea pluckers simply stay at home and male members of the household collect their wages. It should be noted however, that there are instances when women collect the men's wages as well. But such cases are extremely rare.

On the days when ‘wage advance’ is paid, only a few plantations stopped work anyway, usually in the afternoon, when the men were relatively free (Samarasinghe, 1993). It may be argued that as a consequence of a long history of male control of their earnings, the Indian Tamil female tea plantation workers would have internalized the belief that they cannot manage money and voluntarily leave the management of their earnings to the males.

But this does not appear to be the reality. For instance, they have small amount of money that they had managed to hide away in an informal savings system called Ceettu. The participants would take turns in receiving the pooled sum of money each month. That money is not given to the males and the women spend it mainly on purchase of household goods and in some instances on jewelry. As for collecting their own wages, they had neither the resources nor the organizational capability to change the pattern in the face of a male-dominant workplace and a patriarchal domestic sphere.

They viewed themselves as producers, working as many hours as possible to earn the maximum wages.

In addition to the above characteristics and social realities, tea plantation workers devote their lifetime which to an outsider may seem irrational. This situation of total institution remains almost the same as it was in the colonial period. It is the males in the family who collected the cash payment and spends it on themselves.

Most of the families especially females in the household suffer and have to bear burdens mentally and physically with huge responsibility and worries in their lives. They have to earn, prepare meals, look-after the family, arrange marriages and dowries for their female children, look after grandchildren and the like. They tolerate all sorts of

Harassment from their drunken males. As a family they have a peculiar lifestyle, which is totally different from that in the surrounding village culture. Culturally and socially females in Sri Lankan society still behaves in a traditional manner. This includes not drinking alcohol, smoking, or grumbling except for some elite classes and westernized females (Samarasinghe, 1993)

Proposed intervention- Empowering women economically and politically solve many problems of women it is our responsibility to supporting the women for empowerment.