Tea workers at Chandpore Tea Estate in Habiganj have urged Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina to cancel the government’s plan to establish an economic zone on hundreds of acres of arable land in the dicstrict’s Chunarughat upazila. They submitted a memorandum to the prime minister yesterday through Chunarughat Upazila Nirbahi Officer Masudul Kabir, demanding cancellation of the move as the establishment would threaten the livelihoods of thousands of tea workers there, said Sadhan Dulal, president of Bangladesh Tea Labour Union’s Chandpur tea garden unit. Tea workers from other gardens will also file such memorandum today to their respective municipality and upazila nirbahi officers, making the same demand, he told the Dhaka Tribune. The government recently decided to build an economic zone on 511.85 acres of land in Chunarughat, which was earlier leased to Chandpore Tea Estate. The lease was cancelled to make way for the economic zone’s construction. The land, which the tea workers uses for cultivation of food grain, is now owned by Bangladesh Economic Zones Authority. The tea workers have been protesting the decision saying that their livelihood will be at stake once the economic zone is built. Most of the tea workers are very poor, earning as low a daily wage as Tk69; they largely depend on the cultivation of food grains on the land now allotted to the economic zone authorities. The tea workers have been protesting since December 11. They observed complete work abstention from December 11 to December 19, and after that they have been observing two-hour work abstention every day. Workers from Chandpur, Begumkhan and Jualbhanga tea estates in Chunarughat have protested the government decision as well, said Shopon Shawtal, adviser of Bangladesh Tea Labour Union. They formed a human chain in Moulvibazar yesterday demanding cancellation of the plan. “We are uniting together with workers from other tea estates in Sylhet and Chittagong to strengthen our demand. A team from our union will soon visit Chittagong and will work there with tea estate workers as we have no other options left but getting united,” Shapon said. He further said the tea workers will call for complete shutdown in all tea estates across the country soon if their demand is not met. Meanwhile, the Communist Party of Bangladesh (CPB) and the Socialist Party of Bangladesh (SPB) jointly organised a roundtable discussion in this regard at the CPB’s central office in the capital, where both the parties declared solidarity with the protesting tea workers. “This is a conspiracy against the tea workers who have worked on infertile land over more than 150 years and turned it into arable land. Now a group of vested interest wants to take away the workers’s only source of livelihood,” said a press statement issued by the CPB and the SPB yesterday. “There is abandoned land that is bigger than the alloted land for the proposed economic zone in Chunarighat. In such a case, the only reason to allot the tea workers’ land to the economic zone authorities could be that taking that land away would be easier from a underdeveloped community. “The government should cancel the plan and allot some other, infertile land for the economic zone. Let the tea workers have their land, because if anyone has a right over that land, it is the tea workers,” the statement said.
