Plantation Sector: Evaluation of the Issue of Declining Female Workforce in the Future

International Journal of Engineering, Management & Sciences (IJEMS) ISSN-2348 –3733, Volume-2, Issue-5, May 2015

Plantation Sector: Evaluation of the Issue of Declining Female Workforce in the Future Pathirana HasanthiShyama Amarasinghe 

Abstract— Most valuable employee in the plantation sector is

the pucker. But it is evident the number of female workers become less and rapidly declining year by year mainly due to dissatisfaction about their job. The objective of this study is to assess the future impact to the Tea Plantations in relation to shortage of female Workforce. Today, plantations have skilled female workforce but within few years’ time this will declining due to some reasons and management have to face many challenges including a massive problem of carry out day to day operation. By this study researcher going to highlight the importance of matching the management strategies with the worker perceptions to motivate them to retain with the estates works. This will enable the plantations to make good teas and gain the maximum profits, while following the best agricultural practices in the long ter. The study’s findings enables to identify the main reasons for the future shortage of female workers in estates, how important the human resources functions are, ways and means to follow the human resources practices and arrest such problems and the best adoption of recommendations Index Terms— Tea Pluckers, Tea Planation’s ,Human Resource, female workforce shortage.

I. INTRODUCTION Tea pluckers can be classified as the single largest segment of the tea estate work force.Tea is the principal plantation crop in Sri Lanka and the largest foreign exchange earner for the country; it accounts for 10 percent of the cultivated acreage and employs 6 percent of the total Sri Lankan work force (Samarasinghe, 1993). According to the department of senses and statistics of Sri Lanka the total female work force of Sri Lanka is 26 percent. But sometimes the rural subsistence estate sector female workers in Sri Lanka may be not counted so it may be higher than this percentage.

Tea pluckers can be classified as the single largest segment of the tea estate work force.Tea is the principal plantation crop in Sri Lanka and the largest foreign exchange earner for the country; it accounts for 10 percent of the cultivated acreage and employs 6 percent of the total Sri Lankan work force (Samarasinghe, 1993). According to the department of senses and statistics of Sri Lanka the total female work force of Sri Lanka is 26 percent. But sometimes the rural subsistence estate sector female workers in Sri Lanka may be not counted so it may be higher than this percentage.

Tea (Camellia spp.) is an important beverage and the world drinks more of it than any other beverage. It is made from the

tender or young leaves and unopened buds of the evergreen tea-plant, popular as a 'healthful herb'. Two distinct varieties of tea-plant are generally recognized, the small-leaved China and the large-leaved Assam which have been raised to a specific rank by a well-known tea botanist. (Krishiworld).

The commercial planting of tea in Sri Lanka was introduced by a Scotsman, James Taylor in 1867, on 19 acres of land on Loolecondera Estate, Hewaheta. This was carried out with the idea of testing tea as a possible alternative crop for coffee which was facing a leaf rust disease at that time. The first consignment of tea was exported in 1872 and the production of tea topped the 1 Million Pound by 1884. (Krishiworld) Today plantation industry faced to many challenges.

Besides external factors such as world market prices, technological advances, development in competing countries, etc..the main challenge is reducing workforce.In the beginning Workers whole life is estate. They live and worked directly to the estate. But recently this trend has declining and most workers are leaving the estate to find out the outside work. Mainly younger females are residing on the estate but they do not like to attending to the estate works and they seek outside employment. Out migration and chronic absenteeism of registered, resident female workforce is a major issue. This problem has worsened since the early 1990s, and several plantation companies and larger small holdings, first in the low country and parts of the mid country, but now also in the up country, are unable to get enough workers.

(Herath&Sivaram,1996). Aging of current working force will highlight a massive worker shortage in the future.

II.METHODOLOGY Data has been gathered through visiting and by way of discussion with the randomly selected sample of one hundred workers of Hapugastenne Tea Estate, Gallella, Sri Lanka. In addition did some discussions with the Estate Superintendent as well as some of Senior Managers were held to gathered more information. In order to adjust the findings, I got expert advice and information from two Senior Planters.Secondary data has been gathered through related books, magazines, publications, reports, journals and some records in estate.

III. RESULTS A. Daily Routine of a Plucker

Manuscript received May 13, 2015.

Pathirana HasanthiShyama Amarasinghe, University of Colombo, Faculty of Graduate Studies, Colombo , Sri Lanka ,

74

According to the responses from the females about their daily routines, they were the first to get up in their house around

www.alliedjournals.com

Plantation Sector: Evaluation of the Issue of Declining Female Workforce in the Future

4.30 a.m and the last to go to bed around 10:30 p.m. In the morning they carried water, prepared breakfast/lunch, cleaned house, and got the children ready for crèche or school. When they returned from work around 5:30 in the evening, again they took water, and prepared the dinner. Normally they are reported for work by 7:30 every morning and work until 1 p.m. They take their plucked green leaves and continue to work until 4:30 p.m., Then the plucked green tea leaves is taken to the weigh-in shed. In between they have a tea break and lunch break. Usually they return back to their home around 5:30 in the evening and get ready for the next morning.

B. Wages and Other Benefits When we consider their wages they are paid twice a month; that is, there is a formal payday when the printed pay slip is given with all deductions noted (usually between the 10th and the 15th of each month, and a payment day for the "wage advance" (usually between the 20th and the 25th of each month). The new wage package under the collective agreement of September 2009 increased the total wage of a plantation employee by almost 40 percent. It’s including Rs. 285 basic daily wages, Rs 90 attendance incentive and Rs 30 productivity incentive. Employees qualify for the 90 per day, if they report to work for 75 percent of the work-days offered by the estate. And they qualify for Rs.30 per day productivity incentive, if they meet the daily plucking norm set by the estate. As far the as the wage rate of pluckers is concerned the sum of basic salary, incentives, wage related allowances are can shown as follows. This will include other non wage benefits like sick leave payments, maternity payments and attendance bonuses.

What then are the techniques used by the management to raise the productivity of labour? For the pickers incentive wages and for the male field workers piece work or task work, as it is known in plantation parlance. The task or the specific quantum of work is always decided and set by the management "according to tradition" and it is to be expected that the quantum of work fixed would be to their own rather than to the workers' advantage. (Savur, 1973) C. Leave Pattern They are covered with three leave called sick, maternity and unauthorized leaves. A woman is entitled to 12 weeks of paid maternity leave for the first two babies and 6 weeks of paid maternity leave for subsequent babies. She receives on average a payment of 84 days payment for the first two babies, with nominal deductions made for her stay in the plantation maternity ward (which includes provision of food and medicine).

D. Age Analysis

after age 50 it is near on poor plucking because plucking is an exacting operation where the eyes, brain and fingers have to work in unison, complementary to each other.

E. Field Experience 70 percent of the pluckers had experience of 20 years and below. With experience worker is learning largely by trial and error by instructions or observation.Training programmes for fresh recruits on plucking will improve performance. Field training or visual aid methods could be usefully deployed the selective plucking, leaving the side branches, not stripping the bush, etc. (Sivaram&Herath, 1996).

F. Downward Trend in Estate Workforce The Overall worker deficit has been the result of a slow but steady decline over the last years. The decline is expected to continue in future as well with workers being able to find more attractive employment opportunities outside the estates.

Following graph clearly define the workforce declining from 1990 to 2000. The figures include total permanent as well as casual employees both males and females in plantations.

F. Declining Female workers In year 2002 total number of workforce is 11860 while numbers of female workers 7116. When compare with the previous years it is clearly seen that number of workers declined. When we consider the total number of female workforce it is more than half from the total workforce in the Hapugastenne Tea Estate.

G. Calculating the Female Workforce Shortage in the Future Here, is an analysis of available data in Hapugastenne Plantation PLC for identifying the shortage of female workforce per year.

For harvesting a high yielding VP field, it requires about 1520 Pluckersper Hectare (PPH) per plucking round and about 4-6 rounds per month. The time interval between two successive plucking is called plucking round. Plucking round may be extended from 4 to 14 days, to keep a balance between crop and quality.

No of Women Workers in 2009 :5,464 No of working days offer/month:25

The average age of the respondents were 37 year while the largest respondents group between the ages of 38-42 years.

The next most common age 28-32 years old while 5 percent over 53 or older than 53 and 9 respondents 18-22 years.

50 percent of women below the age 35 fell in to poor plucker’s category because of lack of experience and most of them have yet to complete their families. Good pluckers with higher performance between ages 35 to 50 years. However

75

Women pluckers out turn %

: 83%

Total pluckers available for plucking

: 113,375

Revenue extent (Total extent with Tea Bushes) : 4792.49

www.alliedjournals.com

International Journal of Engineering, Management & Sciences (IJEMS) ISSN-2348 –3733, Volume-2, Issue-5, May 2015 Plucking extent@5 rounds per month : 23,987.45 Total pluckers required @5.45 PPH : 130731 Shortage of women pluckers for a month : 17,356 H. Leaving from the Estate Willingness to continue work in tea industry. When consider this nearly half of the workers answered “Yes” to this question. The rest are thinking of withdrawing from the industry. The most common reason cited by female workers was “marriage,” followed by “stress in the workplace” or “no reason”. Young females most commonly selected “want a better job”, followed by “low wage” and “starting own business or self-employment”. They showed a trend toward wishing to pursue economic gain.

I. Reasons for leaving estate By the discussions held with pluckers it seems most of them change their resident estate after the marriage due to some family/personal reasons (child birth, sick parents, spouses dislike etc.) or physical difficulties/sicknesses, to go for another employment (foreign job, garment job) etc. Some respondents they highlighted that when their children are educated they do not like to work in the estate as pluckers and most of them work outside or same estate office and they do not like to see their mother or elder sister still working as pluckers. They like to give a good education for their children. Some of them said the school is so far from their living places and the children could not reach the school on time. They also said lack of higher grades at the estate schools and they wanted to increase the standard of education. Some participants said they have to take their children to the school in the morning and this causes to report for work late. They earn daily but when consider the discussions had with the women workers they pointed that they couldn’t save any amount at the end of the month or year because their husbands waste their wages on alcohol and gambling’s. When working outside in garments or for another country they have a chance to save some thing because they are away from their home in that period. They can spend their salary to purchase of household goods, and in some instances on jewelry. As a result of this most resident workers living the estate but would like to attend the outside employment.

IV. DISCUSSION If human resources are planned and managed properly, and used effectively and efficiently through gain them a satisfaction from their jobs, the managers can retain them in the estates. Meanwhile it is very essential to find ways of gain higher productivity from the existing workers.

76

Teach them that the quantity of harvest will definitely affect their income and quality harvest will enhance characteristics of high grade quality teas and will be in demand. It is also vital to teach them the proper ways of storing, transporting and handling the tea leaves. Following the practice of the estates, training could be given on new methods and use of equipment’s such as shears, machines etc. for plucking. As harvesting/plucking is the main source income generator in an estate, it has to be done in the most effective and efficient manner.

Reduction alcoholism and Gender issues in the estate sector will help to make a peaceful environment to wok. As discussed in the previous chapter we could observe in most of the women that they prefer alcohol free environment for their living.

This is a practical method of finding a solution in some extent for the worker shortage problem in plantations. Most plantation companies have tried out this method for selective estates and it is recommended to use shear plucking where this problem exists.

With a high un-employment rate in Sri Lanka, it will not be a difficult task to get outside workers to fill the shortage of estate workers. Attract more village people and unemployed in the area to work in the estates by offering them attractive benefits. With the increased wages and provision of transport, housing and other benefits it will be much easier to get outside workers. The benefits and the facilities enjoyed by the estate workers are very much greater than what the poor people enjoy in their villages. There are many such villages and colonies around the area from the estates where could obtain workers through village headmen and other politically influential people.

Recognition could need through Praise, Certificate of accomplishment, Letters of appreciation by way of awards/rewards, Promotion, Status symbols /name plate and new title etc.

In addition to base pay further financial rewards may be provided on the basis of performance, competence or experience. Individual performance relating pay could be determined by performance assessment and ratings.

By identifying the strengths and weaknesses of an employee it serves as a guide for formulating a suitable training and development programme to improve his/her quality of performance in his present work. Employers can also inform employees about their progress and tell them what skills they need to develop to become eligible for pay rises and/or promotions.

Team work is always preferable which could create opportunities to set own priorities and enhance the productivity.

The Estate Superintendent has to be an excellent human resource manager as most operations in plantations involve the human asset. If the worker is managed efficiently, managers could gain excellent results. HR Planning is the first step in HR management. It is the process of forecasting, developing and controlling. It is a process for an organization to ensure, that it has the right number of people and the right

www.alliedjournals.com

Plantation Sector: Evaluation of the Issue of Declining Female Workforce in the Future

kind of people at the right places and at comes on the right job.

Communication plays a key role in every aspect in management. Good communication skills will help the manager to persuade, inform, stimulate, direct and convince his subordinates and workers. Especially in up-country estates it is vital for a manager to have a very good understanding of the Tamil language both oral and written, as it is the mother tongue of most of the up-country estate workers (downward communication). In estates, the instructions are given mainly using the oral communication. Workers expect their respective estate manager to resolve their unresolved matters within and outside in dealing with other groups and higher authorities.

When a worker feels that the job he got for the day is difficult, he refrains from attending to that job. For these instances the field office or the person who offer the job, should motivate and encourage the worker to perform that task efficiently and effectively.

If Maslow’s theory is true, there are some very important leadership implications to enhance workplace motivation.

There are ways to motivate each plucker through their lifestyle of management, compensation plans, role definition and company activities.

Physiological Motivation: Provide ample breaks for lunch and recuperation and pay salaries that allow workers to buy essentials.

Safety needs: Provide a working environment which is safe, relative job security and freedom from threats.

Social needs: Generate a feeling of acceptance, belonging and community by reinforcing tea dynamics.

Esteem Motivators: Recognize achievements, assign important projects and provide status to make employees feel value and appreciated.

Self-Actualization: offer challenging and meaningful work assignments which enable innovation, creativity and progress according to long term goals.

Everyone is not motivated by same needs. At various points in their lives various will be motivated by completely different needs.

V. ACKNOWLEDGMENT No research is done entirely by an individual. Many people have helped to do this research and each of their contribution has been valuable. The timely completion of this research is mainly due to the interest and persuasion of My supervisor Mr. Sarath Fernando, Lecturer Faculty of Graduate Studies, University of Colombo and the Chief Executive Officer,Bogawanthalawa Plantations PLC, who was not only my supervisor and teacher but also a good friend and guide.

His valuable guidance, useful suggestions, and support in compiling this Internship Report will be remembered forever.

I also would like to give my thanks to Prof. H. D Karunarathne, Course Coordinator and Lectures, and all other staff of Faculty of Graduate Studies who have contributed greatly to the success of this project. This study would not have been possible without the dedicated efforts of the

77

Hapugastenne Tea Estate staff. Spends their valuable time in compiling this Internship Report will be remembered forever.

With great love I remember, my dear Mother Ms. Mallikarrachchi for kind helpfulness throughout this project and also my two younger sisters Chaturika and Ishari for active involvement throughout the work.

REFERENCES [1]Bhowmik, S.K Source (1980). The Plantation as a Social System, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 15, No. 36, viewed 16 January 2010,< http://www.jstor.org/stable/4369053> [2]Chatterjee,S& Gupta, R.D. (1981). Tea-Labour in Assam: Recruitment and Government Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 16, viewed 16 January 2010 < http://www.jstor.org/stable/4370381> [3]Department of Census and Statistics, Life Tables for Sri Lanka and Districts, viewed23January2010 <http://www.statistics.gov.lk/PopHouSat/index.asp> [4]Dixon, R.B (1982) Population and Development Review, Vol. 8, viewed 16 January 2010< http://www.jstor.org/stable/1972379> [5]Herath D.P.B and Sivaram B. (1995).Labour Economics in Tea, Tea Research Institute of Sri Lanka [6]Hapugastenne Plantations PLC (2008).Annual Report [7]Ministry of Plantation Industries (2008). Plantation Sector Statistical Pocket Book [8]Modder W.W.D(2001), On efforts to stem the flow of workers out of the Sri Lankan tea industry, Vol.18,viewed on 28, January 2010<http://www. thehindu.com/fine/f11821/ 18210680.htm> [9]Planters Association of Ceylon (2009) Wages Collective Agreement [10] Plantation Crops, Krishiworld.com-plantation crops, viewed23 January 2010 http://www.krishiworld.com/html/plant_crops1.htmlPlucking of tea:TRA, viewed on 28 January 2010 < http:// www.tocklai.net/Cultivation/ plucking.aspx> [11] Samarasinghe, V. (1993).Women's Wage Work and Empowerment among Female Tea Plantation Workers of Sri Lanka, The Journal of Developing Areas, Vol. 27, No. 3, viewed 16 January 2010, < http://www.jstor.org/stable/4192229> [12] Savur, M.(1973). Labour and Productivity in the Tea Industry, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 8, No. 11, viewed 16 January 2010 < http://www.jstor.org/4362430

Educational Qualifications: Postgraduate Diploma- Environment Management from University of Colombo Sri Lanka 2012 Master in Business Studies from University of Colombo, Sri Lanka 2009 Postgraduate Diploma in Business Studies from University of Colombo Sri Lanka 2008 Bachelor in Bio Science fromUniversity of Ruhuna

Sri Lanka 2005 Professional Qualifications Quantification of calculating GHG Emissions according to ISO 14064:2009 Standards Provisional Auditor –IRCA –UK ISO 22000 Employment :From 2007 to 2014 : Work as Assistant Manager Sustainability in Finlays Tea Estates Sri Lanka.

www.alliedjournals.com