With the future of the Malawi tea industry looking bleak as both volumes and earnings have steadily declined in the recent past, stakeholders say they continue devising means of sustaining and revitalising the sector.<\/p>\n
Statistics from Tea Association of Malawi (Taml), for instance, show that volumes of tea offered for both domestic and export markets have gone down with total export standing at 30.8 million kilogrammes down from 42.9 million kilogrammes in 2005.<\/p>\n
Apart from reacting to the adverse changes in climatic conditions, one radical step taken this far is an upward adjustment in wages for tea estate workers as an incentive to improve productivity.<\/p>\n
At the week end, stakeholders in the sector met at Taml offices where they signed a new Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to effect a revision in the wages for plantation workers.<\/p>\n
Discussions are, therefore, underway to come up with the revised wage. The process is being implemented with technical support from the IDH Sustainable Trade Initiative under the banner of\u00a0 the Malawi Tea 2020.<\/p>\n
Daisy Kambalame represented IDH and said after signing of the MOU that the initiative is a milestone towards sustaining the viability and productivity of the tea sector.<\/p>\n
\u201cUnder the programme, we are looking at how best we can improve the prices and quality of tea which will ensure that estates and the producers are able to pay a living wage and a living income,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Kambalame said the wages are just a component in the entire process of revitalising the tea sector of the country.<\/p>\n
She conceded that there was a need to be aggressive in crafting sustainable approaches to the industry to maintain its impact to the economy.<\/p>\n
Taml Chairperson Sangwani Hara said revitalising the wages and other conditions of services would help address concerns among players in the sector.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have always believed that wages must be negotiated and that process allows us to come up and consider tea prices, cost of production and it creates conducive environment on issues affecting the sector,\u201d said Khembo.<\/p>\n
Plantation and Allied Workers Union (Pawu) President Gracian Khembo remained upbeat that the pact will give standards for safeguarding workers in the tea sector.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
With the future of the Malawi tea industry looking bleak as both volumes and earnings have steadily declined in the recent past, stakeholders say they continue devising means of sustaining and revitalising the sector. Statistics from Tea Association of Malawi (Taml), for instance, show that volumes of tea offered for both domestic and export markets […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":28721,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-28720","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28720","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28720"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28720\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28722,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28720\/revisions\/28722"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28721"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28720"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28720"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28720"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}