Govt. lends RPCs Rs.1 bln to hike estate worker wages
Holding fast to electoral promises, the Regional Plantation Companies (RPCs) will be loaned Rs.1 billion from the Treasury to pay off the higher salaries to workers on the estates for the next two months. Plantations Ministry Secretary Upali Marasinghe told the Business Times in an interview that his department had requested the Treasury to allocate Rs.1 billion for the payment of salaries to estate workers on the RPCs for the next two months. These funds would be released by the state banks, Bank of Ceylon and the People’s Bank, to the RPCs at a special rate of interest, lower than the commercial rate.
This comes in the wake of the government promise to increase wages by Rs.100 per day for estate workers. Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe had requested the private sector RPC managed companies to raise estate sector wages by Rs.100 per day to achieve the payment of Rs.2500 per month at a recent special meeting called for in this regard. Mr. Marasinghe said after the completion of the two months, the work-linked productivity model proposed by the companies would be implemented within or by the end of this period, He explained that since the productivity based model is set to increase production the companies could then afford to pay the wages based on the revenues earned.
However, under the current crisis situation faced by the RPCs due to falling tea prices in the global market the companies’ incomes have plummeted, as a result of which the industry has called for a change in the system. Plantations Minister Navin Dissanayaka had called the two parties to consider this new model as proposed by the industry to change the current structure and increase productivity on the estates. The trade unions are yet to respond favourably in this regard.
Lanka Jathika Estate Workers’ Union Administrative Secretary Velayuthan Puthradeepan told the Business Times on Friday that they were at present discussing the matters pertaining to the restructuring of the estates under the new model proposed by the RPCs. He said that they would take up the issues on the proposed model for discussion with their members and later hold a meeting of all estate worker unions later this month on the same subject. The collective wages agreement has been in limbo over a year since the RPCs have refused to increase wages without any increase in production.