Leaves of Life :
Timru Leaf Plucker women proceeding towards home with plicked leaves
 

The tribal in Gujarat largely depend on forests for livelihood. Forest resources provide them with food, medicine, fodder and grass, fuel wood and other necessary materials. Over 100,000 tribal women engage themselves in collecting the Tendu leaves (leaves of a tree called Tendu) used in rolling Bidis (local cigarettes) in Gujarat. Of these 20,000 women are from Panchmahal and Dahod Districts.

 
These women get up early in the morning and spend 6-8 hours collecting the leaves. The work goes on without food or water. It is followed by 3-4 hours of counting and stacking the leaves in bundles of 50. The season of Tendu leaves lasts for hardly two months, and the income derived from the collection of leaves gives them little financial support. However, these women have been facing various problems in this activity.

  The problems faced by the women during the collection are:
Agents (government contractors) sometimes pay wages less than the current rate.
As the season starts in summer women having difficulties due to extreme heat and non-availability of drinking water, medical help (first aid), day care facility (for their children when they are at work.
The rate of bundles of leaves, decided by the Forest Dept. is less compared to the hard work of these women.
Contractors avoid payment of compensation for accidents, which occurs during the collection of leaves

During the season workers from DISHA supervised “fuds”(collection centers of Tendu Leaves). The workers of DISHA physically went to the collection centers where the women deposit their leaves to the contractors. It ensured that they receive the just and fair amount of wages, avoided cheatings by the contractors, whether basic facilities of drinking water and first-aid are provided or not and so on.

We Disha has been raising demand for transferring the profit out of MNFP to village Panchayats for last three years from 1999,2000 and 2001 (ever since the Ministry of Panchayats framed the rules of distribution of profits.).
 

We had also asked some tribal MLAs to raise this issue in last assembly of Budget session and also asked the village Sarpanchs to write letters and stake claim for profit share, letter were sent to District Panchayats and DDO (District Development Officer and TDO, Taluka Development Officer). The issue was raised in Assembly house in zero hour, which yielded good result. The Minister made reply indicating to send profit money to all village Panchayats.
  

We have collected information from District authorities about disbursal of profit money to each village, we have started to do survey about, whether the each village Panchayats has received the indicated amount and how the money was utilized for village development.

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Copyrights © 2005 Disha - Gujarat, India.