THE PRICE OF TEA

Otago Daily Times, Issue 26541, 16 August 1947, Page 9

THE PRICE OF TEA

Sir.—i’wish to bring to you and your readers the statement by, Mr Nash that tea workers in India received Is a week. While this is true, it is most misleading and is apt to make people believe that from this Is, these people have to buy all their needs. This is not so, and any person who has been in India and seen or worked with these people will beat tea-planter employs a chief serang who in turn employs coolies to wont the plantation. This serang will round up all his relatives and their relatives, from the tiniest tot to the oldest crone, and the planter pays every one of them Is a week, besides feeding, clothing and housing them, together with medical care. He may even have a hospital for them. For the privilege, of wprking for this serang. each member is docked an amount of pay, so that each gets about 4 pice (8 pice, 1 rupee equals Is 4d) per week. The serang knows and the host knows that if these coolies are paid more than this or given an extra ration of food, and it is the same with any native, be he Hindu, African or Maori, they save it up and ”go bush till it is used up. Also, they are quite happy under these conditions. To my mind there is only one reason why tea should cost 6s 2d per pound and that is because of the terrific amount of pilfering, special payments and bureaus that it meets after arrival from overseas. Even this does not warrant such a cost when Australia <can sell it at 3s 4d per pound.—l am, etc., E. A. S.

[New Zealand-people did not want tea at 4s 2d a pound if people had to work for Is a week to produce it, Mr Nash said; to-day, workers on tea plantations were getting 5s a week. —Ed, O.D.T.J