The plantation sector is facing an acute shortage of labour with migrant workers set to leave for their home States with the easing of lockdown restrictions.
A representative of a cardamom planters’ organisation told The Hindu on Thursday that many works in the plantations were pending and the first harvest was set to begin in July/August. According to him, labour shortage will hit the cardamom sector hard as plant clearing works have to be completed before monsoon.
As per official data, 5,348 migrant workers are set to leave from various taluks in the district. K.S. Mathew, a cardamom planter, said that though many migrant workers who had left for their home States during the off-season had conveyed their willingness to come back, it may not realise soon.
Mechanisation
The plight is similar for tea plantations too as migrant labourers were given leave during the peak summer season. Peerumade, Devikulam, and Udumbanchola host the largest number of migrant labourers in the farm sector, most of them from West Bengal followed by Assam, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Odisha, and Uttar Pradesh.
Though most of the plantation workers were traditionally from Tamil Nadu, a large number of them had gone back after a crisis in the tea sector following a price fall over a decade ago. Opportunities in the construction sector also prompted many to leave plantations. The shortage was compensated to an extent by migrant labourers. Mechanisation too helped the tea sector to an extent in coping with the shortage of labour. However, mechanisation is limited to plucking of tea leaves. Other works such as pruning and pesticide application are still done manually.
Need for expertise
In the cardamom sector, all works are done manually and the harvesting of ripened beans needs expertise and training. “A set of new labourers who may arrive after the crisis will not compensate for those who have left,” said Sajan Mathew, a cardamom grower.
