[ by Kavita Krishnan ]The southern bench of National Green Tribunal (NGT) received a complaint from a local alleging tea leaves being purchased from small growers at cheaper rates and selling it to tea factories in Valparai, which is 250 km away. He further alleged that in order to keep them fresh, a large quantity of freshwater is being used thereby depleting the groundwater.The NGT...
The southern bench of National Green Tribunal (NGT) received a complaint from a local alleging tea leaves being purchased from small growers at cheaper rates and selling it to tea factories in Valparai, which is 250 km away. He further alleged that in order to keep them fresh, a large quantity of freshwater is being used thereby depleting the groundwater.
The NGT constituted a three-member joint committee to investigate the alleged illegal transport of green tea leaves from Nilgiris to Valparai.
The Tea Board has exhaustive guidelines for issuance of NOC for setting up tea factories and currently there are 177 registered tea factories in Nilgiris. If the allegations are true, the local factories in Nilgiris would get less leaves for manufacturing tea.
The proposed factory has to submit list of small growers from whom leaves would be sourced within a 25 km radius and the list of existing factories in the range. The purpose of such information is that the board would only give NOC for setting up new tea factories if there is sufficient availability of green leaves.
According to the complainant, board allows setting up tea factories where there is availability of sufficient green leaves. It does not encourage any practice which will have adverse impact on the quality of tea. Further, the board has encouraged small growers of Nilgiris to set up mini tea factories to ensure that they get the actual price of tea, which otherwise goes to the big tea factories.