The Human Rights Commission of Sri Lanka (HRCSL) has summoned all officials responsible for plantation workers, including representatives from the Ministry of Plantation Industries and the Ministry of Labour, over complaints that estate workers are not properly receiving the daily wage previously announced by the government.
HRCSL Director General Nimal Punchihewa said several complaints had been received from civil society organisations representing the Malayagam community — the Up-Country Tamil population that forms the backbone of the tea estate workforce — alongside tea estate workers themselves. The complaints allege that workers on Regional Plantation Company (RPC) estates are not consistently being paid the gazetted daily rate.
The most recent wage settlement raised the plantation workers’ daily wage by Rs. 400 to Rs. 1,750 with effect from January 1, with the Rs. 200-per-day government contribution and the balance from RPCs — the first time the state has subsidised a plantation wage hike, replacing the unilateral Wages Board mandates of 2021–24. President Anura Kumara Dissanayake had cited the Rs. 1,750 wage as a May Day achievement of his government.
The Planters’ Association, representing RPCs, has noted that wages account for nearly 70% of the cost of production in tea and rubber and has flagged severe sector-wide pressures from the Hormuz-driven fertiliser squeeze and Gulf-market export disruption. Civil society groups argue those pressures are being passed down to workers in the form of partial or delayed wage payment, despite the government’s gazette.
The HRCSL summons is the first formal accountability step on the wage-payment issue since the January 1 settlement took effect and marks an early test of whether the new mechanism is being honoured at field level. The Commission has not publicly disclosed which officials specifically have been summoned, the date by which they must appear, or the timeline for its inquiry.
The Malayagam community has been an active rights constituency in recent months, with three separate assault incidents on estate workers in early May prompting arrests, and an ongoing third phase of the Indian-funded 145-houses plantation housing programme underway.
Source: NewsFirst.
