End to exploitation: Small tea growers in North Bengal to receive SMS of minimum selling price

NewsBharati    06-Dec-2017
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Kolkata, December 6: While tea industry is one of the largest industries if India, small tea growers often get exploited and don’t get the deserved price of their production. To stop this malpractice, The Tea Board of India has introduced a new SMS system. Small tea growers of North Bengal and Bihar will be informed about minimum benchmark price of green tea leaves of every month.

The exploitation has been tormenting small growers for a long time. Despite, the fixing of prices in each district was made operational; they did not know properly the price. They used to sell far lower than the minimum buyer’s price even without bargaining with buyers.

Now the SMS service will easily inform them the minimum price. In September, the Tea Board for the first time announced a minimum benchmark price for green leaf payable by bought leaf factories to small tea growers in West Bengal and Assam.

"Earlier, the Tea Board had started fixing the MBP or the minimum selling price of green tea leaves in each of tea producing districts of the country. The system was made operational to ensure that the small tea growers are not being exploited by the bought-leaf factories and they earn a decent profit over their cost of production," said Bijoygopal Chakraborty, the president of the Confederation of Indian Small Tea Growers' Associations (Cista).

Small Tea Growers Minimum Benchmark Price Tea Board SMS service