Small tea growers affected as procurement stopped

COONOOR: The livelihood of 75,000 small growers in The Nilgiris has been affected as the small-scale tea factories, popularly called bought leaf factories, have stopped purchasing their harvest of green leaf.

“These factories have suddenly stopped procuring our green leaf citing the recent notices issued by Tea Board on the quality norms of the green leaf which they use as their raw material,” President of The Nilgiris Small Tea Growers’ Association Ramesh Chander told TNIE on Wednesday.

On Tea Board’s decision to to penalise growers if they procure coarse green leaf accounting for over five per cent of the total volume, Chander said, “We have been supplying quality leaves all along... So, we wonder why impractical quality norms are being insisted now. We requested the Board to make factories buy our leaf at  Rs 30.03 per kg.”