Amidst allegations that tea factories were not sticking to the price sharing formula as envisaged in the Tea Marketing Control Order (TMCO), the Assam government is “contemplating” to introduce “a strict bill” in the next budget session that will have penal provisions to punish such factories.
Assam’s Industry Minister Pradyut Bordoloi said the state government will “strictly” implement TMCO from April 2012. TMCO envisages price sharing formula between tea factories and green leaf sellers.
Following widespread resentment among the small tea growers in October due to abnormal dip in prices of green leaf tea, the state government directed the Tea Board to implement TMCO in “letter and spirit.” However, due to non-cooperation from many tea factories, which were unwilling to share requisite data and figures, TMCO could hardly deliver any result.
The state government now feel that there is need for a law to penalise the tea factories which wilfully do not cooperate with the Tea Board in implementation of TMCO.
“We are contemplating to introduce a bill in the budget session and we are planning to have penal clauses in it. There are some technical problems but we are taking legal opinion. We are seeing how we could plug all the loopholes. We will try to bring a strict law to address all the lacuna,” Bordoloi told Business Standard.
Bordoloi also said that state government will depute personnel from the industry department to help Tea Board implement TMCO from April next year. “The Tea Board said they do not have sufficient personnel to monitor implementation of TMCO across the state. So we have told them that we will provide personnel from our industry department from April,” Bordoloi said.
The state government, said Bordoloi, has brought changed in the licensing policy of bought-leaf tea factories (BLF). Now, self help groups (SHGs) or cooperatives of small tea growers, or even companies where small tea growers have share, can open BLFs.
Bordoloi also said that the government would launch a “certification programme” for all tea factories in the state in order to ensure that the tea factories maintain quality standards with regard to finished teas. He said a “third party” certification agency would be engaged by the government to grade all the tea factories in the category of A, B and C, which ‘A’ grade being the best.
