A tea garden owned by Duncans

Jaigaon, Aug. 12: Duncans Industries Limited has been instructed by the additional central provident fund commissioner of the eastern zone to deduct 12 per cent as PF contribution of workers instead of the 10 it had imposed last year.

This means the company, which owns 16 tea gardens in the Dooars, Terai and the Darjeeling hills, will have to match the employees’ contribution.

Pravat Mukherjee, the general secretary of the Intuc-affiliated, National Union of Plantation Workers (NUPW), said a letter to this effect had been sent to Duncans on August 8 by the additional central provident fund commissioner Alit Kulshreshta.

A copy of the letter reached Mukherjee today. “Since May-June last year, the company has been deducting 10 per cent of workers’ wages as provident fund contribution instead of the regulated 12 per cent. This means that the workers will get far less than their statutory dues during the time of retirement for the company’s contribution, too, would come down,” Mukherjee said today.

Mukherjee said currently a worker earns Rs 1,472.12 a month and Rs 147 is being deducted for PF at 10 per cent rate. If the deduction was done at the statutory rate of 12 per cent, the deduction would have been Rs 177 and with a matching amount from the employer, the company would have had to deposit Rs 354 instead of Rs 294 it is doing now,” he said.

With around 25,000 permanent on its rolls, the rate cut is saving the company more than Rs 7 lakh each month, an NUPW leader said.

Mukherjee said the NUPW had sent letters to the central and state governments as well as to the regional and central provident fund commissioners about this violation of the provident fund regulations soon after the company started flouting the law.

The acting manager of the Duncan’s Bagrakot garden, S. Tripati, said he was yet to receive a copy of the provident fund commissioner’s letter. “I will get in touch with our head office in Calcutta,” he said.

Mukherjee said till March 31, 2008, 92 tea gardens of the company in Darjeeling, Terai and the Dooars owed more than Rs 30 crore as provident fund dues. He said the provident fund regional office in Jalpaiguri was too short-staffed to recover the pending amount.

The regional provident fund commissioner at Jalpaiguri, N.K. Prasad, said almost 95 per cent of the claims were being processed. “We are going to increase our staff strength so that we can dispose of the cases faster,” he said.