Grant new estate wage rate to workers' in non RPCs

- Thondaman to Athauda:

COLOMBO: Youth Empowerment and Socio Economic Development Minister President and Secretary General of the Ceylon Workers Congress (CWC) Arumugam Thondaman has requested Labour Relations and Foreign Employment Minister Athauda Seneviratne to exercise the powers vested in him and extend the new wage rate of Rs. 260 per day plus the Rs. 9 per kilo to other plantation workers not in the employment of the Regional Plantation Companies (RPCs).

In a statement issued the CWC said that following the Collective Agreement entered into between the Employers' Federation of Ceylon representing the 22 Regional Plantation Companies on the one hand, the Ceylon Workers' Congress, the Lanka Jathika Estate Workers' Union and the Joint Plantation Trade Union Centre on the other on 19th December 2006, the President and General Secretary of CWC and Minister of Youth Empowerment and Socio Economic Development Arumugam Thondaman has requested the Minister of Labour Relations and Foreign Employment Athauda Seneviratne to exercise the powers vested in him to extend the new wage rate of Rs. 260 per day plus the over kilo rate of Rs. 9 to other plantation workers not in the employment of the Regional Plantation Companies.

In a communication addressed to Athauda Seneviratne on 20th December 2006, the CWC President has recalled the Minister of Labour Relations and Foreign Employment to the steps he took to extend the wage rate agreed upon between the contracting parties in 2004 to all workers covered by the Wages Board for the Tea Growing and Manufacturing Trade and the Wages Board for the Rubber Growing and Manufacturing Trade.

The Collective Agreement signed before President Mahinda Rajapaksa on 19th December 2006 provides for a minimum daily wage of Rs. 170, an attendance incentive of Rs. 70 and a guaranteed Price Share Supplement of Rs. 20.

The extension of the terms of the Collective Agreement to the workers covered by the relevant Wages Board will benefit some 100,000 workers employed in Smallholdings and Privately Owned Plantations.