IN THE 1947 State Council elections, the estate workers’ votes significantly contributed to the election of many representatives from the highlands and leftists in the lower country areas.

Concerned by this, capitalist leaders passed Act No. 18 of 1948 to diminish the influence of plantation workers. A key requirement for obtaining citizenship was proving that the father or guardian was a native of Sri Lanka. Then in 1949, the Ceylon Citizenship Act No. 03 introduced even stricter conditions.

As a result, many, including plantation workers of Indian and Pakistani origin, lost their citizenship, voting rights, and other legal status, creating a major crisis. An agreement was reached in 1954 between Ceylon’s Prime Minister Sir John Kotalawala and Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru to address this issue.

Ten years later, the unresolved situation led to the Sirima-Shastri Agreement in 1964, which saw 975,000 plantation workers who had lost their citizenship split between India and Ceylon. India took 525,000 while Ceylon accepted 300,000. By the Sirima-Indira Agreement in 1974, the remaining 150,000 were shared, with each country taking 75,000.

M. Kandaiya, the convenor of a group advocating for those deported from Ceylon, highlighted this. Kandaiya, a political and trade union activist, moved to India after the violence of Black July in 1983.

“Many who came to India found work on rubber and tea plantations. Around 4,000 families are employed in rubber plantations in Kanyakumari, Karnataka, Kerala, and Andhra Pradesh,” he said.

According to earlier citizenship agreements, 461,000 plantation workers were expelled from Sri Lanka, and many now live in Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Kerala, and the Andaman Islands. It is common for them to visit Sri Lanka yearly to see their relatives and friends.

Kandaiya further explained that over 200,000 plantation workers fled to the North and Eastern provinces to escape the violence of 1977, 1981, and 1983.

Impact of estate nationalisation and privatisation

The United Front government that came into power in 1970 nationalised many major tea, rubber, and coconut plantations previously owned by the British.

State institutions such as the Janatha Estate Development Board, the State Plantation Corporation, and the Up Country Estate Development Board were set up to manage these estates. However, the management, filled with government allies, failed to improve the lives of the plantation workers.

Rubber, tea, and coconut plantation workers demanded a shift to monthly wages rather than daily wages, but their requests were denied. Communist party trade union leader S. Nadesan documented that Minister Colvin R. de Silva stated that no country worldwide pays monthly wages to estate workers.

Under nationalisation, some restrictive rules imposed by British employers on workers’ housing and the entry of trade union leaders into the estates were lifted, but the issues of housing and land ownership persisted. Additionally, 300 estate schools previously under company control were transferred to the Ministry of Education following the free education policy.

In 1992, due to the weaknesses in state-controlled estate management, the UNP government, supported by the Ceylon Workers Congress, initiated privatisation. According to the Central Bank of Sri Lanka’s 1992 Annual Report, 449 estates under the Janatha Estate Development Board and the State Plantation Corporation, including 131 rubber estates, were handed over to private companies.

As part of the privatisation agreement, companies were required to provide a daily allowance of 20 rupees to workers to offset the rising cost of living. However, estate managers were reluctant to meet these conditions, leading to agitation among workers who saw their benefits reduced.

The People’s Alliance government that came to power in 1994 continued the privatisation process and introduced a tripartite agreement to resolve disputes between workers and employers. Every two years, union representatives, estate companies, and government labour commissioners would negotiate workers’ wages and concessions. However, the process ultimately failed, leaving plantation workers in hardship and allowing estate companies to exert control beyond government oversight.

The future of the rubber worker

Estate companies’ refusal to implement the government’s directive to increase daily wages to 1,700 rupees has caused a major crisis. Although companies claimed they could not afford such an increase due to rising production costs, reports from the Ministries of Finance and Plantation indicated that rubber export revenues had risen in recent years.

According to State Finance Minister Ranjith Siyambalapitiya, rubber export income increased by 39% in 2022 compared to 2021, with earnings rising from 1.05 billion USD in 2021 to 1.463 billion USD in 2022. The Ministry of Plantation’s Master Plan (2017-2026) targets 3 billion USD in rubber export revenue by 2026. However, achieving these goals without addressing workers’ wage demands seems unrealistic, as workers need higher wages to cope with rising living costs.

“Estates are seeing the birth of underweight children because parents cannot afford nutritious food,” says Devaraj, suggesting that along with wage increases, a cooperative system should be introduced in estates to provide essential goods at subsidised prices.

Low wages, reduced benefits, and job insecurity are pushing many workers to leave the estates. “Both women and men have sought work in the Middle East for years, and younger people are leaving the estates to work in shops, supermarkets, garment factories, or as domestic workers,” says Velu Jeevaratnam, a rubber tapper at the Morathanna estate. His wife has left for the Middle East, and Jeevaratnam continues working on the estate with their children.

Many rubber plantations in the wet zone are being cleared for other projects, and companies are not interested in new rubber cultivation. Some even uproot rubber trees to plant more profitable crops such as oil palm, dragon fruit, and vanilla. The shrinking rubber cultivation area, exacerbated by migration, is a significant issue.

Reports from the Rubber Research Institute show that Kegalle district, which has the most rubber cultivation, had 34,453 hectares of rubber in 2014, Kalutara had 24,195 hectares, and Ratnapura had 22,065 hectares. However, there was a decrease of 12,316 hectares in Kegalle and 8,449 hectares in Kalutara.

In 1989, under President Ranasinghe Premadasa, the Gamudawa programme cleared rubber plantations in the Buttala area. Large rubber estates in Horana were also sacrificed for industrial parks, and there have been requests to hand over abandoned estates to private companies for cultivation or animal husbandry.

Rubber plantation workers, who contribute significantly to the national economy but languish in poverty, must be provided with living wages, housing, land ownership, and basic services such as education, healthcare, water, and transport. Without such reforms, the goals of the rubber industry will be unreachable, and the workers will continue to struggle under oppressive conditions.

* Ishankha Singharachchi reads The Malaysian Insight.

* This is the opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of The Malaysian Insight. Article may be edited for brevity and clarity.