International Tea Day: Mamata urges Centre to help tea workers hit by demonetisation

Kolkata: West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Thursday yet again urged the Centre and RBI to “extend a helping hand to tea garden workers”, who she alleged were “dying” in the aftermath of demonetisation. Her comments came on a day when RBI Governor Urjit Patel was in the city to attend the apex bank’s central board meet. [caption id=“attachment_3146728” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee. File photo. PTI[/caption] On the occasion of the International Tea Day, Banerjee said in her tweet that the tea garden workers were hungry and dying due to demonetisation. “RBI must immediately restore payments by our government through DMs (district magistrates),” Banerjee said. She said as many as 97 people died following the 8 November decision. The Trinamool Congress supremo had on Wednesday demanded that the RBI restore and continue payments by the state government till March 2017. TMC legislators and senior state ministers organised a sit-in in front of the Reserve Bank of India office in Kolkata on Wednesday to protest against the insufficient supply of new currency notes in the state. Banerjee also accused the central government of discriminating between states with regard to disbursement of cash from the RBI.