RANGPUR, July 21 (BSS): The number of tea gardens is growing fast in Panchagarh with increased production every year.
According to Bangladesh Tea Board (BTB) sources, the average tea production is increasing by 100,000 kg annually since 2005. Small-scale gardening basis tea cultivation has already become highly profitable and popular among the local farmers.
Tea in now being cultivated on about 3,500 acres of land in 526 tea gardens in Panchagarh, including 26 big estates, 17 medium-sized and 483 small-scale gardens. Tea cultivation is also expanding in the adjoining districts.
Assistant Tea Development Officer at BTB's Panchagarh Regional Office Minhajur Rahman said tea farming is increasing on small-scale gardening basis there since beginning of its cultivation in 2000.
He said a record quantity of 1.42 million (14.21 lakh) kg of fine quality tea was produced in Panchagarh in 2014.
The expanding sector has created a significant number of jobs in the tea gardens of the district, including for over 8,500 extremely poor, unemployed and distressed women in the recent years.
Earlier, these unemployed rural women, including young girls, housewives, widows and divorcees, had to live a distressful life. But they are now leading a better life by plucking green tealeaves in the officially-recognised third tea zone of the country.
Talking to BSS, female labourers Merina, Afroza, Aklima, Shukla Rani, Motahera and Kulsum of Tentulia upazila said they are daily earning Taka 250 on an average as plucking workers in the tea gardens or fields.
Tea-garden workers Mahfuza, Sonali, Shyamoli, Swapna and Kulsum said they are now taking meals thrice a day, using sanitary latrines, drinking safe water, getting healthcare facilities and living peacefully living behind the extreme poverty of the past.
Labourers Amina, Romena, Maksuda, Nilima and Sabera said they are earning optimum wages by plucking tea-laves, whereas they had jobless hard times in the past.
Supervisor of Moynaguri Tea Company Limited Nazrul Islam said each of the female labourers generally plucks 80 to 100 kg green tea-leaves everyday to earn Taka 250 or even more.
Former president of Panchagarh Chamber Iqbal Kaiser Mintu said the growing tea sector facilitates empowerment of the rural women by creating jobs for over 12,000 people, including 8,500 distressed and unemployed women so far.
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