Guwahati, Oct. 18: The Sixth Pay Commission report for a revised payscale for state government employees has come as a boost for the 15,000-strong staff members engaged with various tea companies in Assam.

The employees, under the banner of Asam Chah Karmachari Sangha (ACKS), have been demanding a 100 per cent hike in pay.

The group has already held a series of meetings with the Assam Valley Branch of the Consultative Committee of Planters’ Associations (CCPA) in this regard. The next meeting is scheduled on October 23 at Dibrugarh.

The members of the CCPA include Assam Branch of the Indian Tea Association, Tea Association of India, Assam Tea Planters Association, Bharatiya Chah Parishad and North East Tea Association.

The tea garden staff members were supposed to get a revised pay scale on January 1. There is a revision of pay every three years for tea garden staff and the last revision expired on December 31, 2008.

“We will not accept anything below a 100 per cent pay hike,” the general secretary of the Sangha, Girish Barpatragohain, told The Telegraph.

Barpatragohain said tea garden staff would be among the lowest paid employees in the state once the state government employees start getting salaries in the revised scale. A newly-appointed Grade III employee in a tea industry gets a basic salary of Rs 3,060, including 40 per cent dearness allowance and 16 per cent variable dearness allowance.

The ACKS general secretary said since cost of essential commodities escalated in the last few months it would almost be impossible for the tea garden staff to survive unless there was a 100 per cent pay hike.

An industry source, however, said it would not be possible for the industry to accept the 100 per cent pay hike demand for the staff members since they get other benefits unlike the state government employees.

“The staff members are paid weekly ration, free medical, housing and other benefits. A tea garden staff employee is much more comfortably placed than a state government employee if one goes by these extra benefits they get,” an official of the Assam Branch of the Indian Tea Association said.

The official added that there would “definitely be a good hike in salary” for the tea garden staff in the new revised scale likely to be announced by the end of this year. “We are hopeful that both we and the ACKS would finally agree upon a new scale in the next meeting.”