Ceylon Workers’ Congress Advisor and Nuwara Eliya District Member of Parliament, Muttu Sivalingam, when contacted for comment by Daily News Business, said: “This is a very good proposal by the Planters ‘Association of Ceylon, (PA) but they did not have the elementary courtesy of discussing it with the estate unions prior to the Collective Agreement.
Sivalingam also said that one of the drawbacks of implementation of the proposal was that the estate workers were refusing to go to most of the cultivated areas of the RPCs which had grown into dense jungle with the Glyphosate ban because these areas under question had been infested with wild animals such as leopard and snakes.
He said that CWC Leader and new Minister of Hill Country New Villages, Infrastructure and Community Development Arumugam Thondaman had met Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa who is also the Minister of Finance and Economic Affairs who had, in turn, directed him and the CWC to meet the Treasury officials.
The CWC had also proposed to the Treasury to give soft loans to the RPCs from the Tea Board funds so that these funds could be recovered at the times when the global tea prices were high and no recoveries when the prices were depressed.