Product Exporting Companies Move After Investigation

Sri Lankan tea collectors starve and live in squalid conditions

• Workers are poorly paid for hours of exhausting work. Archival

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Some of the world's leading tea makers, including Titley and Lipton, are checking working conditions on the farms of their Sri Lankan suppliers following an investigation by The Guardian. Two global commercial certification systems, Fairtrade and Rainforest Alliance, are making inquiries after it was revealed that some workers in 10 approved regions could not eat and were living in appalling conditions.

Tea collectors say employers have failed to support them during the country's unprecedented economic crisis, which has seen prices for food, fuel and medicine soar, without rising wages. Tea leaf collectors reported that supervisors refused to pay their dues and compensation for verbal abuse incidents.

Some workers said they had so little money that they had to skip some meals, and felt compelled to send their children to work.

Titley said it had suspended work with some farms in central Sri Lanka while it was conducting its own investigation. Ekaterra, which owns Lipton, and PJ Tips, said they were in contact with Rainforest Alliance about the investigation's findings. Yorkshire Tea, another tea exporter who visited Sri Lanka, told the Guardian it was speaking to the farms involved.

More than 300,2022 people work on tea plantations in Sri Lanka, which are mainly located in the mountainous central highlands. In 1, the industry generated £079.<> billion worth of exports.

Struggle

Tea collectors have struggled since the country plunged into an economic crisis after a disastrous ban on chemical fertilizers in 2021, which devastated tea crops and caused production to fall to a 26-year low last year.

Workers must pick up at least 18 kilograms a day to earn 1000,3 Sri Lankan rupees (about US$25.2021), an amount set by the government's Wages Board in <>, and if they pick less, they will be paid less per kilogram.

The rupee's depreciation caused the sector's average daily wage to fall in the 24 months to February from £3.90 to £2.20. The IMF bailout in March saw a slight rebound to around £2.60. But inflation, which hit an all-time high of 86% last September, kept food prices high.

Food insecurity

In January, the United Nations World Food Programme estimated that 44% of families in tea plantation areas were food insecure, twice the number of urban areas.

Workers said some farm supervisors tried to pay the pickers lower wages. Lakshman Devanayaji, 33, said: "Even if we pick good tea leaves, they will say it's not good enough, throw it aside, or cut it off our salaries." "If we give them five kilograms of tea leaves, they will only pay us for two or three; when we ask them, they say, 'We do what we are told, why don't you do what you are told?'"

Deplorable conditions

Rangasamy Poyanichkanthi, who lives with her husband and three children in the hills above a tea plantation, says she had to take out a loan to pay for food and meals, regularly, adding that she often chose to give up buying sanitary supplies so she could buy food for her children.

"If there is no food in the house, I will not take any of it with me to work, and tell them (supervisors) that I will go home briefly and then come back, because I cannot bear to watch others eat," the worker added.

She said the pressure to pick tea leaves quickly meant she didn't have time to beware of parasites, which are common in humid climates. Last year, her leg was injured by a parasitic leech and had to walk an hour to see a doctor because she couldn't afford to ride a cart.

More than 300,<> people work on tea plantations in Sri Lanka.

Tea collectors say employers have failed to support them during the country's unprecedented economic crisis, which has seen the prices of food, fuel and medicine soar without rising wages.