Plantation workers are among the poorest paid in Sri Lanka. Their living quarters are comprised of a small verandah, a small room and a kitchen, barely suitable for living. Usually more than one family lives in these line rooms. During the strike the estate manager stopped the supply of running water to the line rooms. The estate's hospital has only an outpatient treatment section, having previously closed down the hospital wards.
Children have to walk over two miles to the nearest school.
Youth unemployment in plantation areas is the highest in the country. Six hundred thousand plantation workers throughout Sri Lanka went on strike in February this year to demand a salary increase, a struggle that was betrayed by the union leadership. But even after they called off the strike hundreds of thousands of workers continued the walkout. Management and the government have launched this frame-up of the tea plantation workers because the trade union bureaucracy is beginning to lose its grip on the workers. The Sri Lankan Socialist Equality Party, which is demanding the release of the imprisoned workers, is fighting for a new perspective for the working class based on international socialism.