Ahmad I.¹ , Yasin M.¹ , Rowshon A.¹ , Rafikul Hoque A.K.M.²

1. Department of Food Engineering and Tea Technology, Shahjalal University of Science and Technology, Sylhet-3114, Bangladesh
2. Project Development Unit, Bangladesh Tea Board, Srimangal, Maulvibazar, Bangladesh
Author    Correspondence author
Journal of Tea Science Research, 2015, Vol. 5, No. 5   doi: 10.5376/jtsr.2015.05.0005
Received: 17 Jul., 2015    Accepted: 18 Aug., 2015    Published: 11 Oct., 2015

This is an open access article published under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Ahmad I. and Yasin M., 2015, Study on Socio-Economic and Educational condition of Tea Worker at Sylhet in Bangladesh, Journal of Tea Science Research, 5(5), 1-8 (doi: 10.5376/jtsr.2015.05.0005)

Bangladesh is one of the largest tea contributors among south Asian countries in world’s tea market as well as a good consumer of tea. The very future of tea gardens greatly depends on tea laborers who spend most of their life in the tea garden. But, so to speak, they have been living in misery from the very beginning of the establishment of tea gardens in Bangladesh. As being humans and/or for the betterment of the tea gardens, they deserve better life than they are now living. It is simply an attempt that has been made in this paper to understand the socio-economic condition in some of the tea gardens of Sylhet division which actually reveals the socio-economic conditions of tea workers as a whole that are yet to be exposed in our country. This paper deals with different aspects of socio-economic conditions of tea labors insinuating on some intriguing issues of social, economical, political and educational status of these deprived people. Special attention has been underscored on the knowledge of the people regarding importance of education where only 8% of tea labors of our survey sample go to different colleges whereas highest percentage of them (around 54%) just attended primary school. The investigation also took attention on health conditions of tea workers which shows that around 75 out of 100 people suffer from different diseases. The paper also investigates the economic conditions of tea labors that show the highest income of a tea worker family is near about 12000 tk per month that was actually 4% of survey sample. However, the average income of a family of a garden is 6245 tk. per month that is too little for a worker to live a lower class lifestyle along with his/her family. Other attention also took place on marital status, sanitation condition, trade union membership, the amount of child labor etc. It has been suggested in the paper that all out efforts must be made to raise awareness among the tea gardeners   about human rights and related matters.

Socio-economic condition; Tea workers