The Sri Lankan government is launching a new pension scheme dedicated to workers in the tea industry — the first of its kind for tea estate and factory employees — jointly administered by the Agricultural and Agrarian Insurance Board and the Ministry of Plantation and Community Infrastructure.
Under the scheme, an employee who joins at age 18 and pays a quarterly contribution of Rs. 600 will be entitled to a monthly pension of Rs. 5,000 upon reaching 60. Higher contribution tiers yield monthly pensions of Rs. 15,000, Rs. 20,000, Rs. 25,000 and above, and contributors can increase their premium at any stage to lift their retirement benefit, according to government statements reported by Newswire and Ada Derana.
The programme will be implemented under the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock, Land and Irrigation in collaboration with the plantation ministry and the Agricultural and Agrarian Insurance Board. Eligibility is open to anyone working on tea estates or in tea factories, with premium tiers adjusted to suit each worker’s financial capacity.
The scheme also bundles life insurance cover. Compensation is payable if a contributor suffers total or partial disability in an accident or dies before reaching the pensionable age. If a contributor dies while drawing the pension, the entitlement transfers to the spouse.
Officials said the primary objective is to provide social security to estate workers who can no longer continue physically demanding work in older age. The plantation sector employs hundreds of thousands of workers, many of them women, and has historically lacked a contributory retirement scheme tailored to its labour structure.
The announcement follows other recent plantation-sector support measures, including an additional fertiliser subsidy for tea smallholders approved earlier this week.
Sources: Newswire; Ada Derana.
