At the receiving end

Alipurduar, Jan. 7: The bungalow of the manager of the closed Mujnai Tea Estate, 68km from here, has been broken into and the refrigerator and ceiling fans have been stolen.

The finger of suspicion points to workers, who have been going without salary and ration from November 23, when the management left the estate without any notice.

Since the garden has not yet been declared locked out, the Jalpaiguri district administration is unable to send the labourers — some of whom are surviving on boiled vegetables — any relief under schemes for closed gardens.

There are 962 workers in the garden located in the Birpara-Madarihat block of Alipurduar subdivision.

Several tripartite meetings have been held in the last one-and-a half months, but the impasse was not solved. Some of the workers were seen uprooting the tea bushes to burn them as fuel.

Not only are the workers’ quarters unfit for living, but there is acute water scarcity too.

Bahra Munda, a worker, said: “I won’t say we have done it (the looting of the bungalow) but the way things are going, incident of theft will be on the rise.”

According to an industry source, another tripartite meeting has been scheduled for January 15 at the office of the joint labour commissioner in Siliguri.