Doomdooma: The Assam Tea Tribes Students’ Association (ATTSA) on Thursday staged a statewide three-hour sit-in protest, demanding Scheduled Tribe (ST) status for the tea tribes community, land rights for tea garden workers and higher daily wages under the Minimum Wages Act, 1948.
The agitation centred on three major demands: granting ST status to the tea tribes community, providing legal land pattas to tea garden workers and increasing their daily wages in accordance with the Minimum Wages Act, 1948.
Irot Tanti, president of the ATTSA Doomdooma Regional Committee, said the community had waited for decades for recognition and justice. “The tea tribes community has been demanding Scheduled Tribe status for decades. Our people have contributed immensely to Assam’s tea industry, yet their long-standing constitutional and social rights remain unfulfilled. We want the government to act now,” he said.
In Upper Assam, a three-hour demonstration was staged in front of the Sadiya Co-District Commissioner’s office under the initiative of ATTSA’s Talap branch committee. A similar protest was organised in the Doomdooma Co-District, where hundreds of people participated, displaying placards and raising slogans in support of the demands.
Tanti said land ownership and fair wages were essential for tea garden workers’ dignity and economic security. “Tea workers deserve legal ownership of the land on which they and their families have lived for generations. Their daily wages must also be revised in accordance with the Minimum Wages Act, 1948. These are not unreasonable demands; they are basic rights. We will continue our democratic movement until all three demands are fulfilled,” he said.
The protesters maintained that generations of contribution to Assam’s tea industry had not translated into adequate social security, land ownership or economic protection for the community.
ATTSA appealed to the state government to take concrete and time-bound measures to address the three demands, warning that the agitation would continue until they were fulfilled.