By Geetha Sunil Pillai
Tirunelveli, Tamil Nadu – “I have worked all my life in this tea plantation. Plucking leaves is all that I know. My hometown is Changanacherry in Kerala, but I don’t have a home or land there. With just 1800 rupees as monthly pension and no bank balance to build a home now at this age, i dont know what is in store tomorrow ” says 64-year-old Sobia James, sitting under a thatched two-room shelter, worried about her future.
Sobia is one of thousands of workers on the brink of losing their homes and livelihoods at the Manjolai tea estate in Tamil Nadu. The Tea Estates are located in Manjolai, Kakachi, Uthu Nalumku areas in the Western Ghats near Ambasamutram. More than 2,000 workers live and work here.
This time, however, the villain is not the employer but the technicalities surrounding the completion of a 99-year lease held by the Bombay Burmah Trading Corporation Ltd (BBTCL).
BBTCL, which has operated the Manjolai estate, must hand over the land to the forest department by 2028. In preparation for this transition, the company has issued a notification to extend a Voluntary Retirement Scheme (VRS) for workers at its tea estates in Manjolai, Manimuthar, and Oothu in Tirunelveli district.
This story was originally published in themooknayak.com. Read the full story here.