The Assam government has directed all tea garden managements to open bank accounts of its workers
The Assam government has directed all tea garden managements to take steps for opening bank accounts of its workers and make them e-payments - the deadline for this mammoth project ended this evening.
This has been the biggest impact of demonetisation in Assam.
"People are happy in the tea gardens. We are opening accounts for the first time. We will face some difficulty at the beginning but later on everything will get sorted," said Jugen Patnaik, a tea garden labourer from Doyang Tea estate, Golaghat.
Doyang is 300 km from Guwahati. The British-era garden in Assam's Golaghat district -- one of the major tea hubs in the state -- has nearly 1,100 labourers.
Sitamani Mahar, another tea garden worker in Doyang, was happy that would be "no financial bungling".
While a section of workers are upbeat, the task is daunting for the garden management and more for the banks.
"The accounts are being opened under the Jan Dhan scheme. We have service providers who will get it done at the garden itself," said Manjeet Singh, Chief Regional Manager, United Bank of India.
To make enrollments hassle free, biometric data of the workers are being taken so that biometric enabled ATMs can be later installed in the tea gardens. The gardens have been asked to allot space for the ATMs.
Sources in the State Bank of India say no less than 1,000 ATMs will be requiredto cater to 11 lakh workers in around 850 large tea gardens.
In the second phase, more than 7 lakh workers of the small tea growing sector will be covered.