The Bengal labour department on Friday issued an advisory, asking tea estates to pay the annual bonus to workers at the rate of 20 per cent by September 15.

In the tea industry, the bonus of the previous fiscal year is paid ahead Durga Puja.

Partha Biswas, the additional labour commissioner of the north Bengal zone, posted in Siliguri, issued the advisory. North Bengal has around 300 tea estates, which employ approximately three lakh people.

“The bonus has to be disbursed by September 15, and the labour commissionerate will monitor execution of the advisory,” read the advisory.

For years, the rate of bonus has been decided on by trade unions and tea planters through bipartite talks. Multiple rounds of bipartite meetings are held to finalise the bonus rates.

While the minimum rate of bonus is 8.33 per cent, the highest is 20 per cent of the annual earnings of a worker.

A senior tea planter in Siliguri said there were a few instances when the state played the role of an arbitrator to fix the bonus.

“But that happened only when the bipartite talks failed. This time, the state labour department has taken a proactive move to issue the advisory on its own when only one round of bipartite talks has been held for the tea workers of the hills, while not even one bipartite meeting has been held for the tea estates of the Terai and the Dooars,” he said.

Anit Thapa, the chief executive of the Gorkhaland Territorial Administration, had met state labour minister Moloy Ghatak recently and requested him to take the initiative for tea garden workers in the hills to get a bonus of 20 per cent.

Sandeep Mukherjee, the principal adviser to the Darjeeling Tea Association (DTA), said the advisory was akin to a notification and that the industry would try to adhere to it.

“However, we will request the trade unions to split the bonus into two instalments of 15 per cent and five per cent for those gardens which are financially weak,” he said.

The DTA, sources said, is planning to raise this issue during the next round of the meeting with the unions scheduled for August 25.

Saman Pathak, the Darjeeling district CPM secretary and a trade union leader, however, said there was no mention of the split bonus in the advisory.

Prabir Bhattacharjee, the secretary general of the Tea Association of India, said planters apprehended that the advisory could create troubles for financially weak plantations. “If any problem crops up, we hope the labour department will take a proactive role,” Bhattacharjee said.

Another section of tea planters said during the bipartite talks held every year on bonus, lower rates were fixed for financially weaker gardens on a case-by-case basis. “This time, we don’t think there is any such option. This advisory, of course, is a cause of concern for such gardens,” said a planter.