All posts by nedhamson

Activist, writer, researcher, addicted to sharing information and facts.

Israel surpasses 1,000 coronavirus deaths, red cities prep for lockdown

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List of over 30 areas to be released today • Balad head: Gamzu program does not address unique characteristics of Arab society

COVID-19 leaves Indian tea workers struggling for survival

Working means risk of illness; staying home means going hungry

Tea plucking in Kerala, India. Image via Flickr by Neil Faz. CC BY-NC 2.0

A plantation worker plucking tea in Kerala, India. Image via Flickr by Neil Faz. CC BY-NC 2.0

India, the fifth largest economy in the world, has suffered immensely during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. The unemployment rate increased to 24 percent in May, leaving day labourers — like those who tend the country’s tea plantations — facing poverty and hunger due to the scarcity of work and the lack of government assistance.

By April, many of them were forced to resume work despite the country’s COVID-19 restrictions, even though there were not enough healthcare or safety measures in place for their protection.

The #TruthAboutTea

India is one of the world’s largest tea producers. Two regions in particular, Assam and West Bengal, together produce over 70 percent of the country’s tea. The industry is the second largest provider of formal sector employment in India, providing jobs for more than a million families on tea estates. A startling 70 percent of these workers are women, who are paid very low wages and made to work in appalling conditions.

As a result, the majority of them lead a life without dignity — a plight depicted in the #TruthAboutTea campaign series on YouTube by the non-profit Oxfam India. Even before the pandemic, the series claims, they had been living in unsanitary conditions, barely surviving on dirt-cheap wages with little or no access to healthcare and education systems:

According to the video, on average, a plantation worker walks 16 kilometres and carries 24 kilograms of tea leaves every day, only to earn a daily wage of about 150 Indian rupees (INR) daily. That’s the equivalent of two United States dollars (USD), after 13 hours of work. Only 87 percent of workers receive the maximum salary of INR 4,500 (US $61) per month.

Some labourers work barefoot and only a small percentage of them are provided with protective gear like gloves, masks and boots. Women are sometimes forced to return to work mere days after giving birth and there are not enough well functioning creche facilities for babies. There are also no toilets on the tea plantations, and many labourers do not have one at home either.

The human cost of tea production in India is high; deprived of basic rights, workers and their families say they feel like slaves to the tea garden owners.

Limited options

As India entered the first phase of its COVID-19 lockdown on March 25, many tea plantations ceased operation. By April 4, however, the Indian Tea Association had written to the state government asking for the “resumption of normal operations in tea gardens while adhering to the prescribed safety and social distancing guidelines”.

Concerned about the economic effects, journalist Pratim Ranjan Bose questioned the lockdown measures, but also noted the “stigma on the plantation sector with respect to sanitation, health and hygiene issues among labourers”.

Nevertheless, state administrations permitted some plantations to resume operations as early as April 10. By the time the third phase of the lockdown arrived (May 4-17), tea plantations were allowed to operate normally, even though the healthcare facilities supporting them were ill-equipped to manage COVID-19 patients.

Trade unions in North India’s tea gardens soon began filing police complaints over lockdown violations, but at that time people were more concerned about the economy than about the wellbeing of tea workers.

Harihar Nagbansi, a community correspondent from VideoVolunteers whose family works and lives on the Bhatkawa tea estate in West Bengal, reported:

While the whole country is under lockdown to combat coronavirus, work continues as is in the tea estates of [the] Alipurduar district of West Bengal. These estates are in such far off areas that information regarding the virus has not reached everyone and they are willing to work without any protective [gear]. Quite obviously, the tea garden owners also don’t care what this pandemic will do to these workers.

As at the time of publication, COVID-19 cases in India have surpassed four million — nearly three precent of its total population.

In West Bengal, there are around 174,659 cases, with 3452 deaths; Assam has approximately 121,224 cases, with 345 deaths — but there is no available information on how many tea plantation workers have contracted COVID-19 to date.

According to a report coming out of an initiative jointly undertaken by the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and the Indian Tea Association (ITA), plantation workers in these two regions had successfully managed to keep COVID-19 out of the tea gardens until the third week of May. The initiative involved enrolling the workers into mandatory hygiene programmes in order to improve their standards of sanitation.

Workers protest

In another video report, this time from the Madhu Tea Garden in North Bengal, Nagbansi said the tea plantation workers are not being provided with the minimum 100 days of work stipulated in the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA).

With life made even more difficult because of the COVID-19 restrictions, the workers organised a protest on June 29, demanding to be provided with 200 days of work and an increase in payment to INR 600 (US $8) per day:

However, Indian tea plantation workers have been protesting against low wages for the past few years without any success.

‘A cup full of woes’

A February 2019 research study titled ‘A cup full of woes’, in which Subhashri Sarkar and Reji Bhuvanendran examine the pay scale of tea labourers, revealed that the Indian tea industry is in crisis.

Stiff competition, increases in the cost of production, and the closing down of several tea plantations due to a decrease in demand has resulted in huge losses that hamper the industry’s sustainability.

Compounding the issue of unfair wages is a myriad of factors, including a lack of interest from management, failure to implement state laws and the absence of effective monitoring by the central government.

In the meantime, COVID-19 rates continue to climb.

Written by Rezwan

Unproven Covid ‘cure’ gets big dose of coverage | RNZ – (News talking heads are not doctors or scientists)

“It’s hydroxychloroquine all over again, and the question is; with scarce resources, should you actually spend them on Ivermectin? Well, maybe you should  . . . but there is stronger evidence for other drugs around at the moment,” Dr Swan said. Source: Unproven Covid ‘cure’ gets big dose of coverage | RNZ

More than 1,000 UK doctors want to quit NHS over handling of pandemic

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New survey finds two-thirds of respondents plan to leave within three years, citing Covid-19 burnout and frustrations over pay

Over 1,000 doctors plan to quit the NHS because they are disillusioned with the government’s handling of the Covid-19 pandemic and frustrated about their pay, a new survey has found.

The doctors either intend to move abroad, take a career break, switch to private hospitals or resign to work as locums instead, amid growing concern about mental health and stress levels in the profession.

Continue reading…

Kyle Rittenhouse and his militia defense ignores that private paramilitaries are illegal

Creating a militia is not the same as exercising your Second Amendment right to, say, arm yourself with a gun and protect your shop from looters. A militia operates under the authority of the president or a governor; if it doesn’t, it’s just an armed mob.

Source: Kyle Rittenhouse and his militia defense ignores that private paramilitaries are illegal

Coronavirus cases postpone TCU-SMU game, the season’s first college football matchup involving a Texas Big 12 team

TCU Horned Frogs against the Texas Longhorns at the Amon G. Carter Stadium in Fort Worth on Oct. 26, 2019.

TCU had been scheduled to play its rival SMU on Friday, Sept. 11.

Credit: Eddie Gaspar/The Daily Texan

Plans to press forward with major college football in Texas have been dealt an early setback after Texas Christian University canceled its first football game due to COVID-19.

The game against Southern Methodist University, scheduled for Sept. 11, was canceled Friday after some TCU football athletes and support staff tested positive for the virus, said Jeremiah Donati, TCU’s director of intercollegiate athletics, in a statement. Donati did not indicate how many athletes or staff tested positive but said “no one is currently facing serious health issues.”

“In the course of following CDC guidelines and our aggressive testing and contact tracing strategy, we discovered that some student-athletes and support staff in our football program have tested positive for COVID-19,” Donati said. “Those individuals were notified immediately and are currently abiding by CDC protocols.”

The Big 12 Conference announced in August its football season would move forward as scheduled, with member schools agreeing to enhanced testing for athletes. The TCU-SMU game would have been the first involving a Big 12 team this season. Texas Tech University, Baylor University and the University of Texas at Austin all have games scheduled for Sept. 12.

A handful of Texas teams that play outside the Power Five conferences — SMU, Texas State University, Houston Baptist University, the University of North Texas, Stephen F. Austin University and the University of Texas at El Paso — have games scheduled for Saturday.

Donati said TCU will continue following prevention and testing protocols ahead of their conference opener against Iowa State on Sept. 26.

Disclosure: Baylor University, Southern Methodist University, Texas Christian University, Texas Tech University, University of Texas at Austin, the University of Texas at El Paso and University of North Texas have been financial supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune’s journalism. Find a complete list of them here.

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