The New Nation - Internet Edition

BSS, Rangpur

The overall socio-economic condition of common people is changing fast in Panchagarh following faster growth of boosting tea sector.

Local tea growers, chamber leaders and officials concerned opined that setting up of more tea processing industries, competitive markets at the grassroots for tea leaves, supply of natural gas and resolving problems like power crisis could accelerate further boosting of tea sector.

At the same time, hundreds of Panchagarh females, who lived in utter miseries due to abject poverty for years together, are now changing their fates and achieving self-reliance by earning wages as plucking workers in the dozens of tea gardens at the officially recognised third Tea Zone of the country.

The growing tea-farming sector in Panchagarh has ushered in a new hope for further enhancing the standard of their socio-economic life and women empowerment if the problems they have been facing were resolved, they said.

The female workers are yet to get their just wages from the garden-owners as the boosting tea-farming sector in the region has been facing manifold problems including present unfair prices of the produced tea leaves for the tea farmers.

Presently, over 7,000 skilled an unskilled workers, mostly women, have been working in 246 tea gardens, including 18 big estates, 13 medium-size and 215 small-scale gardens set up on more than 1,815 acres of land in Tentulia and its surrounding areas, they said.

Of them nearly 2,300 workers, mostly women, are working alone at the giant Kazi and Kazi Tea Estate (KKTE) at Tentulia which has earned reputation in both national and international markets by producing, processing and marketing the famous and most popular Mina Organic Tea and earning foreign exchange.

Small-scale tea farmer Mozahedul Hassan of village Dwarikamari in Sadar upazila while talking to BSS said he has been farming tea in seven Bigha land after selecting 20 Bighas for the purpose and lifting 50 to 60 kg tea leaves every week from the garden.

"I am selling tea leaves at the rate of Taka 9.50 per kg to the tea processing factory of Tentulia Tea Company Ltd (TTCL) available here so far and earning almost no profit because of the lower prices. It would be better if the per kg price of raw tea leaves was fixed at Taka 12 per kg," he added.

Small-scale tea farmers Abdur Rahman of village Dorjipara, Esahaq Ali Mandal of village Pediagoach and Raju Mia of village Majhipara in Tentulia upazila and Motiar Rahman of Sadar Upazila expressed similar views to BSS recently.