Lily Kujur is an activist from the tea gardens of West Bengal and joined us as a Community Correspondent in January 2021. Her mission is to highlight the exploitation faced by hundreds of tea plantation workers with regard to their wages, provident fund, and land rights and do stories till there's a positive impact on her community people. Sipping a…

Lily Kujur

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This video report is from North Bengal - an area dotted with beautiful Tea Gardens. The area is strategically located with Nepal, Bhutan and Sikkim in the North, the Gangetic plains of Bengal on the South, Bangladesh and Assam on the East and Bihar on the West.

In this video, Community Correspondent Lily Kujur brought out the issue of gender equality in these tea gardens. When she was talking to various women workers, they told Lily that mostly women work as labourers there. The woman does all the work except the functioning of the machines. 

There are no women supervisors yet, and no women managers. The women workforce, who are adept at their work are demanding better participation in managerial and supervisory positions.Though they are assets of this industry, they are considered as cheap labour rather than a specialised labour force. They earn meagre incomes, do not have appropriate healthcare facilities and education - all these combined act as a barrier to their participation in decision making positions in a Tea Garden.