Published : 07 Oct 2026, 04:55 PM
Updated : 07 Oct 2026, 05:42 PM
A government task force proposal to shift the tea sector from industry to agriculture is "not an intellectually sound" move, Hossain Zillur Rahman has said.
"Tea is an industry. It has a cultural heritage. This is not an intellectually sound proposal from the government," the former advisor to the caretaker government said on Wednesday.
He spoke at a consultation titled "Bangladesh Cha Shilpa Punorgothon: Cha Shromiker Opor Er Probhab" or Restructuring Bangladesh's Tea Industry: Its Impact on Tea Workers, held at the National Press Club in Dhaka.
Zillur said the move sat oddly with the government's own push for financial inclusion, and would chiefly benefit owners, who stand to gain cheaper bank loans, while doing nothing for workers.
"There is a visible dependence on foreign groups," he said, calling the shift a step that would deepen inequality already highest in the tea sector.
He added there was scope to improve tea quality through branding and research, drawing on examples from other countries.
The task force, formed this year and headed by the chairman of state-owned National Tea Company, submitted 59 recommendations, of which 10 have been made public.
A 12-member monitoring committee formed in August to oversee the recommendations is headed by the commerce minister and includes the Bangladesh Bank governor, several ministry secretaries, the NBR chairman, and heads of the Tea Board, Tea Association and Tea Brokers Association.
Nipen Pal, general secretary of the Bangladesh Tea Workers Union, said no worker representative sat on the committee.
"The government is sitting with the owners. It has not held any discussions with us," he said, adding that worker concerns would go unheard without their inclusion.
Tea worker Khairun Akter said she would take to the streets if the sector were reclassified. "I am a tea worker -- that is my identity. I do not want to lose it," she said.
Syed Sultan Uddin Ahmed, former chairman of the Labour Reform Commission, proposed drafting an independent alternative proposal addressing workers' development.
Women's rights activist Khushi Kabir echoed the call, saying worker representatives must be included in all related committees.
In the keynote paper, researcher Philip Gain put the tea sector's workforce at 102,000 permanent and 40,000 temporary workers, and suggested Bangladesh follow Sri Lanka's model for restructuring the industry.
The consultation was jointly organised by the Society for Environment and Human Development (SEHD), the Power and Participation Research Centre (PPRC) and the Bratyajan Research Centre.
