Minister of Labour and Foreign Employment, Manusha Nanayakkara, said yesterday (26th) that all plantation employers should implement the decision to raise the wages of plantation workers to 1700 rupees starting next month. Plantations that do not pay the minimum wage will be taken over by the government and handed over to those who will operate them properly.
The minister stated that small tea plantation owners are already paying more than the minimum wage. However, local plantation companies, which were owned by the government and later transferred to the private sector, are not willing to increase their wages. Consequently, the Minister said that the President decided in the cabinet to prepare the basic bill to take over the estates owned by companies that do not implement the minimum wage and give them to those who can manage them properly.
The minister made these remarks while participating in an event to inform the workers of the Elpitiya tea plantation industry about the increase in wages for plantation workers. Further commenting, the minister said:
“Several rounds of negotiations were held regarding the plantation workers’ salaries. After several meetings with the plantation employers and the labour unions, both parties could not reach an agreement. Therefore, we, as the Ministry of Labour, convened the Wage Administration Council in accordance with the powers assigned to the Ministry.
The plantation employers did not attend the first meeting. Consequently, a second council was called, but they officially informed us that they would not participate in that meeting either. Therefore, as a measure that can be taken when there is no agreement, by delegating authority to the Labour Commissioner General, we finally acted according to the legal provisions available to us in the Administrative Council.
Accordingly, we proposed that the basic salary of Rs. 1350, with ETF and EPF, should be increased to Rs. 1700 with an additional allowance of Rs. 350. On April 30th, we gazetted this decision, which came into effect on May 1st. The relevant parties were given 15 days to file objections, but no formal, acceptable proposal or plan was presented. Therefore, last Thursday, we officially confirmed the gazette announcement that the basic salary is 1350 rupees, with an allowance of 350 rupees.
The President discussed this salary issue with the employers on many occasions and requested their cooperation. The president is committed to growing the tea industry.
However, in the end, no successful response was received from the employers. That is why we made this decision about the salary. Therefore, in the future, all estate employers will have to pay this minimum basic salary.
In particular, we want to remind you that there are small tea estate owners and tea factory owners who already pay above the minimum basic salary of 1350 rupees. Some pay 1700 or 2000 rupees. Therefore, this amount is not a problem for those who implement this system properly.”