FM gives cash been to Assam’s 7 lakh tea workers

The central government has reached out to the Assam tea garden workers, in time for the assembly polls in the state, with Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman distributing Rs 3,000 each to 7.47 workers.

She said the Prime Minister Narendra Modi, before the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, had wished to work for the upliftment of tea garden workers and had accordingly launched several schemes. According to the PTI, an additional amount of Rs 3,000 each will be credited to the bank accounts, as part of the third tranche of the flagship scheme, of  7,46,667 workers.

The incentive was made through direct benefit transfer (DBT) mode to 6,33,411 bank accounts of tea gardens in 2017-18 and 7,15,979 accounts in 2018-19 across 752 tea gardens.

Sitharaman said all middlemen have been eliminated with the introduction of DBT mode in various schemes and the Centre will continue to support tea gardens in Assam in future. “PM Modi favored using technology for the benefit of people while implementing the schemes and so the concept of DBT was introduced,” she explained. “Due to this, middlemen were totally eliminated and the benefits reached directly to the beneficiaries.”

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The Minister also highlighted that the Union budget for 2021-22 has allocated Ra 1,000 crore for the welfare of women and children of tea gardens in Assam and West Bengal as per the request of the BJP-led government in the northeastern state. “After bank accounts were opened for tea garden laborers, some issues cropped up. But when I instructed the bankers in February last year to correct the anomalies they worked tirelessly, even during the COVID-19 crisis, and everything is on track now.”