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Alipurduar, April 11: Bharnobari Tea Estate in Kalchini is set to reopen on April 28 after a new financier agreed to bail out the owners of the garden that has been locked out since December 30, 2005.

The decision was taken at a tripartite meeting held at the labour commissioner’s office in Calcutta yesterday. Afterwards, Bharnobari Tea & Industries Ltd agreed to lift the lock-out order at the garden.

Kingshuk Sinha, the new financier, also owns Radharani Tea Estate located in the same area.

Sinha attended yesterday’s meeting, along with the director of Bharnobari Tea & Industries, Arvind Poddar, the secretary of the Dooars Branch of the Indian Tea Association, P.K. Bhattacharjee, and representatives of different trade unions.

According to an agreement with the union leaders, Bharnobari Tea & Industries will clear 60 per cent of the workers’ dues, which include wages, ration, bonus and other fringe benefits but not PF and gratuity, by May 2009.

The owners will fill up vacancies created by death, retirement, or resignation with permanent workers from families that have only one earning member. Others will be recruited on a three-year contract and made permanent in 2011.

The garden had 2,034 workers on its rolls when it closed down.

Following yesterday’s development, the operations and maintenance committee (OMC), which had been monitoring plucking of green tealeaves during the period of closure, will be dissolved.

The news of the agreement between the owners and the trade union leaders reached Bharnobari late last evening, sparking celebrations among the workers, who set off firecrackers, distributed sweets among themselves and played with gulal.

From this morning, the workers started pruning the tea bushes and cleaning the machines at the factory, which had been lying unused.

“Over the past couple of weeks, Sinha had been paying the workers Rs 50 per day through the OMC. From today, they will be paid at normal rates (around Rs 55),” said Madan Sarki, the convener of the Bharnobari OMC.

Sarki added that Sinha had also paid Rs 1.66 lakh to clear the electricity dues of Bharnobari Out Division. “Within this month, he will pay another Rs 1.96 lakh for electricity in Main Division,” he added.

The estate also has more than Rs 8 crore as bank dues, but Sarki could not provide any details about how the new financier and the owners plan to settle that.

Sinha could not be contacted despite repeated attempts.

Bharnobari, one of the 13 closed tea estates in the Dooars, has witnessed scenes of acute poverty in the past couple of years. According to garden records, 88 people have died there in that period.

A large number of people, especially young women and men, have left in search of work.

The estate was identified by the Union minister of state for commerce and industries, Jairam Ramesh, for his nation-wide drive to reopen closed tea gardens.