Fwd: FW: Human and Worker Rights Essential for Food Security Rights

[Guest guest]

>

> Editor's Note: This article from the Toronto Star

> presents an important story on the exploitation of

> plantation workers, emphasizing the significance of

> human and worker rights for the exercise of food

> security rights (these rights were not separated in

> original UN charter). Also underscored is the

> importance of fair trade, which should be supported

> by industrial world countries in their purchasing

> decisions. Finally, this article indicates that

> ethno-culturally based discrimination is a central

> aspect of former colonial and still cheap food

> system, and confirms that rights to food cannot be

> separated from access to other human rights.

>

>

> www.thestar.com

>

> Finally, a chance to escape plantation;

> Canadian-funded project helps tea pluckers break

> free of servitude they've endured for decades

>

> Martin Regg Cohn. Toronto Star. Toronto, Ont.: Oct

> 23, 2005

>

> The romance of tea estates is a powerful tonic

> verdant hills blanketed in mists, plantation

> managers dining in colonial-era bungalows, women

> pluckers deftly tossing emerald tea leaves into cane

> baskets.

>

> But the reality is a bitter brew. Plantation workers

> in Sri Lanka's lush highlands occupy the lowest rung

> of society - condemned to a life of virtual

> servitude.

>

> Now, a Canadian development project is trying to

> undo decades of discrimination and neglect by

> helping the country's most vulnerable workers wean

> themselves from their dependency on the

> paternalistic tea plantations.

>

> Toiling under the tropical sun, they emerge from the

> damp tea bushes with their ankles bloodied by

> leeches. By night, they languish in shacks with

> corrugated roofs, huddling near kerosene lamps to

> keep rats at bay.

>

> The grim working conditions are the least of their

> worries.

>

> The plantation, for all its hardships, is the only

> home they have ever known the place where they were

> born, where their parents died - and where their

> grandparents first arrived from India as indentured

> workers.

>

> The real trouble - harassment and incarceration -

> comes when the tea pluckers venture beyond the

> sprawling plantation grounds without proper birth

> certificates or National Identity Cards. In the

> outside world, they are treated as non-persons,

> turned away from bank lineups or taken away at

> police checkpoints.

>

> For decades, plantation workers were non-citizens

> despite being born on Sri Lankan soil, off India's

> southeast coast.

>

> Barred from citizenship after independence in 1948,

> they were treated as outsiders - so-called " Indian

> Tamils " - whose ancestors were brought in by the

> British from Tamil Nadu to do the work others

> wouldn't touch.

>

> Today, they are trying to reclaim their rights,

> thanks to a $4 million aid program run by World

> University Service of Canada to help them take

> advantage of changes to Sri Lankan laws.

>

> " They are looked down upon because their parents

> came as indentured labourers, " says Bill Duggan, a

> WUSC manager heading the Plantation Communities

> Project.

>

> " They were brought over basically as slaves, " he

> explains. " They were born on the estate and never

> thought they'd leave the estate. "

>

> That mentality is changing, as the younger

> generation tries to break free from that

> cradle-to-grave cycle. Management is also trying

> harder to retain its rapidly declining workforce by

> easing the backbreaking workload and improving

> conditions.

>

> As ownership of the plantations has changed -

> founded by the British in the late 1800s, tea

> estates were taken over by the Sri Lankan government

> after independence and later privatized - so has

> management's outlook. WUSC is bringing unions and

> owners together to give workers more control over

> their lives.

>

> " The tea industry in Sri Lanka is in serious

> trouble, " notes Duggan. " They've got to increase

> productivity and profits, but they are hemorrhaging

> workers like crazy. There are serious labour

> shortages because young people don't want to work

> there with the stigma and living conditions. "

>

> The tea estates employ about one of every 20 workers

> in the population of 20 million. Sri Lanka's

> plantations are the world's largest source of tea

> exports and remain the country's biggest earners of

> hard currency. But for ordinary tea workers, getting

> ahead - or even getting out - can be a constant

> struggle.

>

> When Anthony Lazarus dared to leave the plantation,

> he was stopped at a train station in the capital,

> Colombo, where police detained him for failing to

> produce an identity card.

>

> The tea worker was kept incommunicado for three days

> and beaten by officers who suspected him of

> involvement with the Tamil Tigers - the guerrilla

> group seeking separate statehood for indigenous

> Tamils in the northeast.

>

> " Everything was done for us by the tea estate, so I

> depended on the plantation to provide me with a

> birth certificate, " says Lazarus, 47. " They

> promised, but it never happened.

>

> " Now, we require documentation for everything. My

> birth certificate is required for my children's

> birth certificate. "

>

> Bank loans, welfare payments, voter registration,

> school enrolment, marriage and passports are among

> the basic rights denied to workers without ID cards

> or birth certificates.

>

> " Even if I die, it's required, " Lazarus says.

>

> The WUSC program, funded by the Canadian

> International Development Agency, sends trained

> staff into the highlands to help Tamil-speaking tea

> workers, many of them barely literate, fill out

> forms in the language of the majority Sinhalese.

>

> " Now, I have proof that I am alive, " Lazarus says,

> showing off his identity documents in the darkness

> of his plantation home.

>

> At the nearby Dunsinane plantation, Chandralatha

> Vythilingam says she never needed the ID card on the

> estate, where she started plucking tea leaves at age

> 12. But when she was turned back at an army

> checkpoint, she realized her vulnerability.

>

> " I was really frightened because the police accused

> me of lying, " says Vythilingam, 32.

>

> She is one of the fastest pluckers on the

> plantation, collecting an average of 30 kilograms of

> tealeaves daily, but her Grade 4 education has

> always been a handicap. She sought help in a market

> town to fill out the official forms but was only

> swindled out of her money.

>

> " Everything is done in Sinhala at the government

> offices, " she says, pursing her lips. " I had lost

> all hope. "

>

> After waiting several years in vain, she turned to a

> mobile WUSC clinic and obtained her documents within

> three months.

>

> " Instead of praying to God, I can now thank WUSC for

> this, " she says, beaming.

>

> Still, documentation is only an essential first

> step. Workers face daunting obstacles in obtaining

> an education and vocational training, and many face

> difficulties at home from the scourge of alcoholism.

>

> Little wonder so many young people are desperate to

> move on.

>

> " I didn't want to stay on the estate and do the same

> job as my father, " says Muniyandy Sathivel, 34, who

> was born on the plantation.

>

> " How can you continue living like this? There is no

> electricity, only a kerosene lamp - and if a rat

> tips it over, it will catch fire. "

>

> Backed by a WUSC training course, Sathive obtained

> bank loans and has become a profitable farmer

> supplying chickens to the area.

>

> But his brother, local union leader Ramaya Darmaraj,

> 47, says pluckers can barely survive on a base

> salary of 135 rupees ($2) a day.

>

> Estate manager Christopher Stork, a

> fourth-generation tea planter, says dependency is a

> hard habit to break. He sees the acquisition of

> identity cards and birth certificates as the

> prerequisite to bolstering workers' self-reliance -

> and keeping them happier happier by easing their

> problems with banks and the security forces.

>

> " The identity card was a godsend to these workers, "

> he says, sipping an after-lunch tea in his estate

> bungalow. " Now, we're getting the workers involved

> and letting them manage their lives. "

>

> To be sure, that's not solving all the plantation's

> problems, but the partnership with WUSC is improving

> relations with the union.

>

> Founded 100 years ago by the British, the estate was

> a " white elephant " when Stork took over four years

> ago but is no longer losing money.

>

> He defends the low wages as unavoidable in a highly

> labour- intensive industry facing stiff overseas

> competition from Vietnam, Kenya and India, where

> workers earn even less. Higher wages will come only

> when mechanization makes the declining workforce

> more productive, Stork argues.

>

> Currently, the short, thick tea bushes are

> painstakingly plucked by hand, with only the top two

> leaves harvested on a rotating schedule - demanding

> but unrewarding work.

>

> " We prefer to employ women because they look upon

> the plants as one of their children; they are

> treated with special care, " the plantation manager

> says.

>

> But for the workers, the question is about when they

> will be better able to care for themselves - and

> their offspring - rather than merely nurturing tea

> plants.

>

>

> Credit: Toronto Star

>

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