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Rs. 1,000 minimum daily wage to begin this month: Non-paying planters face jail time and fines

07 Apr 2021

  • Court of Appeal denies interim relief

  • First payment for March due on 10 April 

  Minister of Plantation Industries Ramesh Pathirana stated in Parliament yesterday (6) that the payment of the promised Rs. 1,000 minimum daily wage to all estate workers is to begin from April. However, when inquired by an opposition MP, he said that the Government has no plans of taking over the lands of the RPCs that do not pay this amount. When we spoke to the Commissioner General of Labour Prabath Chandrakeerthi for further clarity on the issue yesterday (6), he laid out certain punitive actions that could be taken against RPCs who do not oblige. “If the RPCs do not give Rs. 1, 000 as the daily wage for the plantation workers, as per the Wages Board ruling, then the Wages Board Ordinance could be used to charge them; and if found guilty, they could be fined and sentenced to jail for a maximum term of six months imprisonment,” he said. Chandrakeerthi also said that the RPCs are bound to pay the Rs. 1,000 minimum daily wage from 5 March 2021, as that was the date of the Gazette notification being issued in this regard. “Usually, plantation workers are paid for the previous month on the tenth day of the next month. Therefore, on 10 April, the RPCs would have to pay for the month of March on the basis of Rs. 1,000 as the daily wage,” said Chandrakeerthi. On 5 April, the Court of Appeal refused to grant the interim relief sought by the plantation companies to suspend the payment of the Rs. 1,000 daily wage until the hearing of the writ petitions filed by them was concluded. Last month, 20 RPCs applied to the Court seeking a writ to suspend the Wages Board’s decision to increase the minimum daily wage of estate workers to Rs. 1,000. In a statement to the press on 5 April, Minister of Labour Nimal Siripala de Silva said that until the final decision by the Court is given, the RPCs are required to pay the Rs. 1,000 wage. “If they refuse to do so, the Labour Commissioner General has the power to file cases against them,” added de Silva. Meanwhile, the Planters’ Association (PA), in a statement issued yesterday, said that although the RPCs reiterate that the fixed wage of Rs. 1,000 would not be beneficial for the worker, they would “fulfill their obligations”. “The earning model which was offered by the RPCs and rejected by the unions would have been a mammoth departure from the outdated colonial era models currently in place, and would undoubtedly have improved worker livelihoods monumentally,” the statement further said. The next Court hearing in this regard is fixed for 5 May. The proposal for increasing the minimum wage of plantation workers to Rs. 1,000 was declared at the 2021 Budget reading in December 2020. Subsequently, the Ministry of Labour convened a Wages Board to bring a resolution to the matter, following multiple rounds of talks between the RPCs and the trade unions, which failed to reach a mutual agreement. The Gazette ordering that a Rs. 1,000 daily wage be paid to plantation workers was released early last month.


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