The Reality of Tea Estates: Women

"Top two leaves and bud" is what I have been constantly reminded are the ones plucked for the best tea. That level of precision can be attained by human hands only, as machines tend to collect twigs which taints the flavour, and women's hands are believed to be more nimble and thus better suited to picking. The Ceylon tea industry employs over a million plantation workers, of which 140 000 tea pickers whose economic contribution is not duly recognised and rewarded.

Before leaving the house at around 6:30, female workers perform their duties as wives and mothers by attending to the children and cooking breakfast as well as lunch for the family. An early trip to the shared outside toilets or bathing area often attracts unwanted sexual attention from neighbours or family members due to the lack of privacy. A tea plucker's engagement in plantation work begins around 7:30 but it's often a lengthy and strenuous walk to the assigned patch where they will weave themselves through the scrawny bushes looking for the tenderest, greenest leaves until 5:00 pm, with a 45 minutes lunch break.

On the 27th November I wrote a diary entry about my morning picking tea in the rain with Aisling on Kelaniya estate: "Darshana rang to make sure we knew to wear long socks and trousers because of the leeches, possibly rub our legs in with soap. We also got bin bags to wear over our jumpers to protect us from the rain, my raincoat would get torn on the bushes, Darshana said. The first twenty minutes were stimulating, then the monotony took over, the wet and cold started to seep in, a couple of spots on my leg became suspiciously itchy. After two hours, my bladder about to burst, we decided to go and weigh our leaves, which we reckoned would amount to roughly 6kg each. We had picked 2kg each and that was a real eye-opener as to how much these women pick daily. In retrospect it is not a particularly physically demanding activity, but a laborious, mentally unchallenging and colourless one."

Between 8 am and 5 pm, a woman is expected to harvest 18 to 22kg of tea leaves, depending on the estate, in order to receive the stipulated daily wage, currently around Rs. 650 or £3. An additional Rs. 23 are gained for every kg above the fixed norm. A tea picker's income is based on the daily wage rate determined by the collective agreement, the number of work days offered by the estate management and the number of days of work completed. A requirement that 75% of the offered work should be completed each month in order to receive the full wage means that most women are paid lower rates, sometimes 50% of the full wage. On top of this, women do not collect their own pay, it is routinely handed over to the males by the estate management, increasing the likelihood that it will be wasted on alcohol or gambling.

Finally home after ten hours on the steep slopes, the tea picker doesn't sit down to rest her sore back and aching feet. Collecting firewood, fetching water, washing her family's clothes, cooking, cleaning, attending to children and grandparents, all these chores remain for her to do.

At the root of this cycle are poor education, the lack of interaction with the outside world and of diversified skills, and the hold of the management which has lead these women to believe that tea picking is the only job they are fit for. The few women to escape this tight grip emigrate to other Asian countries and the Middle East where they work as housemaids for triple the wage of a tea picker, but often suffer worse abuse and exploitation.

Sascha