Tea industry seeks ATM facilities across gardens

The tea industry has urged Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman to facilitate setting up of ATMs across gardens to facilitate payments to the workers, an industry source said on Tuesday.

At a meeting held here on Tuesday between various stakeholders of the tea industry and the finance minister, Seetharaman was told that setting up of ATMs in the gardens will help the workers to get other government benefits directly transferred to their accounts.

Tea workers have been getting cash payments as wages from their employers so far, secretary general of Indian Tea Association Arijit Raha said.

Raha said, ''The finance minister has been very receptive and said the matter will be looked into and also expedited''.

On payments from Iran for tea export to that country, the industry maintained that since oil is not coming from Iran anymore the INR reserves of the Iranian central bank is low.

Raha said there is a payment problem and tea trade is being hindered.

Earlier India used to pay in INR to Iran for imports of oil from that country and the money used to be kept in the Iranian central bank. Iran used to make payments for its tea imports from India from that money.

Now that there is no oil import from Iran, the fund in the account in the Iranian central bank has fallen. But tea exports to Iran from India continues and there is now a payment problem.

The tea industry also sought facilities like interest convention on capital an d also a special package.