Sri Lanka's plantation workers live on the fringes of society. But politicians want their votes

SPRING VALLEY, Sri Lanka – Whoever becomes Sri Lanka's next president, Muthuthevarkittan Manohari doesn't expect much change in her daily struggle to support her four children and elderly mother, with whom she lives in a shabby room on a tea plantation.

Both leading candidates in Saturday's presidential election are promising to give land to the country's hundreds of thousands of plantation workers, but Manohari says she's heard it all before. Sri Lanka's plantation workers are a long-marginalized group, often living in abject poverty. But they can influence elections by voting as one.

Mahohari and her family are descended from Indian indentured labourers brought in by the British during colonial rule to work on plantations that first grew coffee and later tea and rubber, crops that are still Sri Lanka's biggest earners of foreign currency.

For 200 years, the community lived on the fringes of Sri Lankan society. Soon after the country's independence in 1948, the new government stripped them of their citizenship and voting rights. Around 400,000 people were deported to India under an agreement with Delhi, separating many families.

The community fought for its rights and gradually prevailed until it received full recognition as citizens in 2003.

Today, there are about 1.5 million descendants of plantation workers in Sri Lanka, about 3.5% of the electorate, and about 470,000 people still live on plantations. The plantation population has the highest rates of poverty, malnutrition, female anaemia and alcoholism in the country, and has some of the lowest levels of education.

They represent an important voting bloc formed by trade unions that also function as political parties and are allied with the country's major parties.

Although they speak Tamil, they are treated as a separate group from the island's indigenous Tamils, who live mainly in the north and east. Nevertheless, they have suffered during the 26-year civil war between government forces and Tamil Tiger separatists. Plantation workers and their descendants have been subjected to mob violence, arrests and imprisonment because of their ethnicity.

Most plantation workers live in overcrowded housing called “line houses” owned by the plantation companies. Tomoya Obokata, a UN special rapporteur on modern forms of slavery, said after a 2022 visit that often five to 10 people share a single 3.05 by 3.6 meter room, often without windows, proper kitchen, running water or electricity. Several families often share a single simple latrine.

There is no proper medical care on the plantations and the sick are cared for by so-called plantation medical assistants who do not have any medical qualifications.

“These degrading living conditions, combined with harsh working conditions, are clear signs of forced labour and in some cases may even amount to serfdom,” Obokata wrote in a report to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.

The government has made some efforts to improve conditions for plantation workers, but years of financial crisis and opposition from powerful plantation companies have slowed progress. Access to education has improved and a small group of entrepreneurs, professionals and academics descended from plantation workers has emerged.

This year, the government negotiated an increase in the minimum wage for plantation workers to 1,350 rupees ($4.50) a day, plus an extra dollar if a worker picks more than 22 kilograms a day. Workers say this target is almost impossible to achieve, in part because the tea bushes are often neglected and grow sparsely.

The government has built better houses for some families and the Indian government is helping to build more houses, said Periyasamy Muthulingam, executive director of the Sri Lanka Institute for Social Development, which deals with the rights of plantation workers.

But many promises were not kept. “All political parties promised to build better houses during the election campaign, but they do not implement this when they are in power,” said Muthulingam.

According to Muthulingam, over 90 percent of the plantation population is landless because they are excluded from the government's land distribution programs.

In this election, incumbent President Ranil Wickremesinghe, who is running as an independent candidate, has promised to hand over the terraced houses and the land on which they stand to the people who live in them and convert them into villages. The main opposition candidate, Sajith Premadasa, has promised to break up the plantations and distribute the land to the workers in the form of small farms.

Both proposals will face resistance from plantation companies.

Manohari says she has lost hope. She is more worried about what will happen to her 16-year-old son after he had to leave school due to lack of money.

“The union leaders always come and promise us houses and land, and I would like to have them,” she said. “But they never come as promised.”

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Francis reported from Colombo, Sri Lanka.