Thiruvananthapuram: Labour minister T.P. Ramakrishnan said that the state government would seek legal advice on taking over the Bonacaud Estate that had been shut down for three years.
The minister’s announ-cement, made in the Assembly on Wednesday, came in response to Congress MLA K.S. Sabarinadhan’s demand, raised as a Submission in the Assembly that the Estate be taken over by the government. In 2015, after the Estate was shut down, the then labour minister Shibu Baby John, too, had said that the state would take over the Estate following a Submission raised by Sabarinadhan, his first Submission as an MLA.
Mr Sabarinadhan, while presenting his submi-ssion on Wednesday, said that besides assuring employment, the 1,000-odd acres could be used for a variety of purposes like a tea estate and farm tourism. Bonacaud Estate, under the ownership of Mahavir Plantations, has reminaned shut since March 5, 2015. But the labour minister and the labour commissioner had held talks with the management and employees for the re-opening of the Estate.
In fact, a decision was taken during the talks convened by the minister in March, 2017, that steps would be initiated to disburse the salary arrears and pension benefits, and also for the revival of the Estate’s functioning.
Following this (on May 10, 2017) a settlement agreement was signed between the managment representatives and employees in the presence of the labour commissioner. During a subsequent meeting convened by the commissioner to assess the progress of the agreemment it was found that 77 of the 90 workers who were eligible for gratuity had received it.
However, there was no progress on the payment of salary arrears (of 34 months) of employees who had worked in the Estate and had attained pension age between 1999 and 2002. The management said that the documents related to the arrears were in the company office and that the office was sealed as part of the attachment proceedings. “No steps could be taken on the issue as the details related to employees who had retired from the company btween 1999 and 2002 were unavailable,” the minister said.
However, Mr Ramakrishnan said that sanction had been granted for the use of the District Plantation Relief Committee funds for the reconstruction of wrkers’ quarters. The Committee, during a meeting held on March 19 this year, had decided to hand over the reconstruction work to a government-approved agency.
