Crisis pushes West Java tea plantation workers to the edge

By Kafil Yamin

BANDUNG (JP): The morning sun bathed the earth with its warm light. Women in Sundanese kebaya clothing and wide straw hats walked along an ascending track cutting through a vast tea plantation. Their hats make them visible from quite a distance, like turtles creeping toward the hill top. This is a regular scene during the tea harvest in Kabandungan village, Sukabumi, West Java.

It is as if time stands still in the 350-hectare village. Such scenes have been occurring in the village, with a population of 4,938, for over a hundred years, since the Dutch built the tea plantation and put the locals to work on the estate.

Today, the tea plantation is run by state firm PT Nusantara VIII and the privately owned PT Jayanegara Indah. A small piece of the plantation is managed by the villagers.

Indonesia has been suffering through economic, social and political crises, but life in this part of the country remains largely unaffected. The horizon of life here is limited to tea plantations, farms, mosques and homes.

Even when the country saw a remarkable economic growth of 7 percent, accompanied by the emergence of more prosperous and educated layers of society and mushrooming corporations, the income of the Kabandungan villagers changed little.

And when the economy collapsed, big enterprises went bankrupt and some 100 million Indonesians fell back into poverty, Kabandungan villagers did not feel much of an effect.

"Yes, we consume lower quality rice and fewer side dishes, but still we lead the same life and do the same job we did in the past. We don't think this will change in the future," said Rohmana, an elderly villager.

A recent study by the Bandung-based AKATIGA social study center shows that before the crisis, each plantation worker earned Rp 65 for every kilogram of tea they picked. With an average of 25 to 40 kilograms of tea picked per day by a plantation worker, pickers earned an average of Rp 1,625 (20 U.S. cents) per day. They worked between 6:00 a.m. and 11:00 a.m.

Before the crisis, with this average daily income, plantation workers could afford to buy one kilogram of rice, which cost Rp 1,000 per kilogram, modest side dishes and other basic necessities.

After the crisis, daily wages for the workers were raised to Rp 90 per kilogram of harvested tea. This boosted workers' daily income to Rp 2,250. While the price of rice has continued to climb, the plantation workers can still afford to eat rice thanks to the so-called labor intensive drive.

This drive includes the utilization of every idle plot of land. With the government encouraging the utilization of all unused land, the workers, after finishing at the tea plantation, till the previously unused land for additional income.

The plantation workers' rising wages are the result of the rupiah's fall against the U.S. dollar. Even though the world demand for Indonesian tea has not risen, tea exporters' revenues have doubled and tripled in rupiah terms. In fact, the actual value of the increased wages is still lower than the rupiah's depreciation.

Indonesia is one of the five largest tea producers in the world, producing 150,000 tons per year. Unfortunately, its tea export volume plummeted to only 66,000 tons in 1998, a significant drop from the 98,000 tons it exported in 1996. This fall was largely the result of an oversupply in the world market, caused by large tea harvests in India, Sri Lanka and Kenya, three of the world's leaders in tea production.

Not only has this oversupply hit Indonesia's tea exports, but it has also dragged down the price of Indonesian tea to US$1.30 per kilogram from US$2.75 per kilogram.

At times, the cost of daily necessities rose beyond the plantation workers' means. Six months ago, the price of lower quality rice soared to Rp 3,250. The prices of other basic necessities, including sugar, cooking oil and wheat flour, also skyrocketed. Now, with the prices of basic necessities relatively stable, Kabandungan villagers can live a "normal" life.

As in other parts of Indonesia, the tea pickers here are all women. It is a common belief that picking is an exclusively female task. The same is true in paddy fields, where harvest is the time for women.

While women pick tea, men work on farms and earn almost twice as much as the women. The men mostly work for landowners, who gave the men a pay hike when the crisis hit. Before the crisis, the men earned Rp 3,500 for five hours of work on the farm. Now, the men get Rp 5,000 for the same work. Apart from the cash, they also receive four liters of rice for their toil.

"Altogether, my wife and I earn Rp 7,250 per day. That's just enough for us to survive," said Sukardi, a Kabandungan villager who has three children.

He admitted that times are harder now. Everyday he hears people talk about the "economic crisis", which he does not really understand. "I just think that economic crisis means harder work and higher prices for basic necessities," he said.

Cassava

While Kabandungan villagers are able to survive the hardships by taking part in the labor intensive drive, desperation reins among laborers at PTP Nusantara VIII in Montaya village, Gunung Halu, who are not included in the social safety net and labor intensive programs.

Also, the tea they pick is subject to "quality examinations" which determine how much they will be paid.

"Once I picked 30 kilograms of tea in a day and I was paid less than Rp 3,500. The company said the quality was low," said Samsidar, 40, from Montaya.

Since the crisis, Samsidar has been forced to mix her rice with cassava in order to feed his family.

Djunaedi, her husband, spends the whole day on the farm. Like his fellow villagers, he grows vegetables, chili, bananas and corn. With fertilizer becoming more expensive and harder to obtain, their crops are vulnerable to disease.

"During the last six months, diseases have hit our crops twice," Djunaedi said. "This is the third planting. I don't know what other troubles the farm will go through."

Villagers in Montaya cannot afford to send their children to school. After graduating from primary school, boys will begin to help their fathers work on the farm and daughters will be married off.

"Girls should get married as soon as possible so that they are no longer a burden to parents," Djunaedi said.

He said he had always been a landless farmer. In this vast agricultural area, more than 90 percent of Montaya villagers are landless.

"We belong to the land, not the other way around," he murmured.