THE working class of Sri Lanka is at the sharp end of capitalism at its most brutal and vicious. Workers and youth face a daily struggle to survive from early morning until late at night.
This has produced a revolutionary development, with the masses of workers hating capitalism, and openly hostile to all of the left parties who have betrayed them.
The LSSP, which claimed to be a Trotskyist party, set the pace by joining a bourgeois coalition government in 1963 (read G Healy’s pamphlet ‘Ceylon the Great Betrayal’), providing an example that all the other ‘left’ parties followed. The mass of workers are now openly hostile to all the existing left and Stalinist parties because of their treacherous conduct. This class treachery opened up the way for the Sri Lankan ruling class to split the working class into Sinhalese and Tamil communities, to encourage communal violence and racism.
Big class confrontations are developing as Sri Lanka’s privatised and deregulated economy constantly strives to drive down workers’ living standards to starvation levels.
The working class is seeking a revolutionary party that can unite it to put an end to its oppression by the ruling class by carrying out a social revolution.
Very low wages, hunger, and appalling ‘housing’ is the reality for millions, and workers and youth have no option but to fight it.
News Line visited Tamil tea plantation workers in the Nuwara Eliya district in the Hill country, and Sinhalese rubber workers and gem miners in the Eheliyagoda area.
Nuwara Eliya has been producing tea for 150 years and is known as ‘Little England’ due to its cool climate. At first sight the plantation area with its lush green foliage, bushes, grass and plants seems like an idyllic paradise on Earth. However, once one becomes familiar with the brutal exploitation and suffering that is imposed in this paradise, the idyllic appearance of the hillside tea plantations gives way to the more menacing quality of a Dantes Inferno.
There are over one million workers in this area of which 90 per cent are Tamils and 10 per cent are Sinhalese.
We spoke to Kumar Rasamy Kamalanathan, who is president of the People’s Plantation Workers Union, which has about 450/500 members and has existed since 2003. He lives on St John’s Estate, which is a division of the Brookside Company. The estate is about 200 acres and is home to 150 families. He explained the historic origins of Tamil plantation workers and their conditions.
‘Tamil workers were first brought here in 1835, from Tamil Nadu in India, to grow coffee. This was not a voluntary migration. Workers and their families were forcibly removed by the British Army. A total of 200,000 were forced to walk all the way, over 18,000 died from cholera, fever and other diseases on the journey. Thus began a living hell for these workers which continues to this day.
‘First of all, these workers were used to clear the forests and build the roads and railway tracks. Within 10 years the coffee cultivation had completely failed. They then started the tea plant cultivation, which was successful, and that is why so many Tamil people are here today. There are now over 700,000 Tamil workers employed on the tea and rubber plantations.
‘This area was picked by the British rulers of the day because of the climate. The Low country is between 1,600 to 3,000 feet above sea level and produces tea and rubber. Over 3,000 feet is called the Hill country, or Up country, and over 4,000 feet is for tea production only.
‘The houses that were built for these plantation workers, 150 years ago, are still being lived in. The buildings are the same; there have been repairs, but they are still the same houses. The working day for a plantation worker starts at 7am and finishes at 5pm, with a meal break between 12 and 1.30pm, when workers go home to eat.
‘Tea pluckers are paid 121 rupees a day (about 66p) and must pick 20 kilos (44 pounds weight). If you don’t produce 20 kilos, your wages are halved. Workers are employed casually, on a day to day basis. You report to the Master Centre at 7am, from where you will be sent to whichever field they want picked that day. If you are 10 or 15 minutes late, you are sent home and you don’t work that day.
‘Pluckers walk on average 3-4 kilometres on their rounds over steep hills and rocks. There is no insurance. If workers are injured at work they get seven days’ money – at the bosses’ discretion – and if your injury incapacitates you for over a month or longer you still only get seven days’ money.
‘For an injury, such as loss of a finger, workers receive 10,000 rupees (£55) from their employer. The working week is five or six days. In the crop season (rainy season) they work seven days, but in the windy season only three days per week. The windy season lasts for three months, so during this time workers only get half their income.
‘On a full working week there is still not enough for meals for their families throughout the week, and on the three-day week families go hungry. Women are the tea pluckers, men do the pruning, clearing, manuring and spraying. The workforce is half and half.
‘Our struggle is to form a strong union to fight the management. We have three main concerns which we campaign for.
‘Firstly, the houses people live in must be completely rebuilt and greatly improved. At present, if the plantation closes or during a strike workers get sacked, you also lose your home. Also, workers do not have individual addresses, you only have the estate address. All this should be changed, workers should own their homes and not the company.
‘Secondly, we must get a good salary for the workers, because at present the cost of food and of living is very high. I think 400 rupees per day is needed. Others such as electricians and telecom workers earn around 12,000 rupees a month.
‘Thirdly, in the Hill country, plantation workers’ children only get state education up to grade five, that is primary school level. For any further education children have to travel on average seven to 10 kilometres, according to where you live. Most workers can’t afford the travel costs, so school finishes for these children at 12 years of age. Lots of our children go to work as servants all over the country, in private houses, in hotels, in shops, and in vegetable markets, until they are 17. The children get food and accommodation and their parents get on average 300/500 rupees per month. There are some cases of these vulnerable children, both boys and girls, being raped by their employers.
‘Plantation workers are very angry that their children are forced to leave home and are brutally exploited at such an early age. Families are lucky if they see their children maybe three times a year at festivals and Christmas.
‘I think the state must provide education up to GCE ordinary level, that is from age 11 to 16, grade six to 11. On St John’s Estate, for example, there are 150 families, about 300 children, and only 20 go to further education.
‘On health, the government hospital is free, but it can be a 40/50-kilometre journey to get treatment. There are no ambulances, you must get your own transport, usually a tea lorry, even if there is an accident or emergency. Pregnant women, most of whom are malnourished, are also transported by lorry. In Sri Lanka, during pregnancy, women are supposed to get 80% off the cost of necessary vitamins paid for by the government, but this does not happen for plantation workers. They must pay the full cost themselves.
‘When women enquire, they are told by health officials that they are not part of the scheme. But they are told that 500 rupees and vitamins are available from the estate management for families with two children who agree to be sterilised. They are trying to brainwash and compel families to agree.
‘In other villages the scheme operates after 3-5 children and is voluntary. Before this scheme, about 40 children enrolled at the local school each year, now it is only two or three.
‘The present pension scheme is very bad. Every year workers are entitled to 14 days’ wages in pension payment. After 20 years of work you are only entitled to 280 days’ payments, after that there is nothing. Then workers must apply for state assistance, and only one or two are selected. If you are selected, you get up to 500 rupees each month after deductions. But if any public works are happening, your pension money goes towards it. I think after 20 years every worker should receive a monthly pension as a right.’
Continued tomorrow
