Guwahati, Apr 18: Almost one-third of the children in tea garden plantation areas of Assam have never been to school. This startling fact has been revealed in a survey conducted by an NGO in association with the Asom Sarva Sikshya Abhijan Mission which conducted extensive field-based research in nine major tea growing districts of the state.

The NGO, the North-Eastern Social Research Centre (Nesrc) in the study covered as many as 172 out of 683 tea estates in the nine districts and assessed the compliance by estate management’s of the legal provisions for welfare of tea garden workers. Nesrc director Dr Walter Fernandes says, "In order to arrive at conclusions the Centre interviewed more than 500 people including plantation workers, trade union activists, executives, teachers and government officials."

"We collected data from 172 estates and the focus was on primary education and on closer examination it was seen that out of 239 children in the 13-14 age group only 54 (23 per cent) were at school while in the 11-12 age group the situation was slightly better with 118 out of 397 (48 per cent) in school," Fernandes said. Bureau Report