Tragedy of the Last Heralds
In the end, they will all grow old. One by one, they will depart this life, reaching the true finish line. No new generation has come to replace them either. Twilight is heralding for the tea pickers of Nusantara.
In the end, they will all grow old. One by one, they will depart this life, reaching the true finish line. No new generation has come to replace them either. Twilight is heralding for the tea pickers of Nusantara.
The morning mist was still in the air southwest of Mount Kawi, East Java, when Kantun Rahayu, 38, and some contractual tea pickers arrived at the Sirah Kencong cluster in Ngadirenggo village, Weling district, Blitar regency.
The cluster, which is of Dutch colonial heritage, belongs to the 325.14-hectare Bantaran Estate at an altitude of 600-1,500 meters currently managed by the PTPN XII state-owned plantation company.
Atop a small mound amid the vast green expanse are the ruins of three altars that is Sirah Kencong Temple, which dates back to the Majapahit Kingdom.
Kantun and the group of tea pickers usually start work in the morning and come to the temple to take their break at noon. The pine trees around the temple form a shady canopy against the sun.
That day was the 1,000th day since Kantun’s husband had died. She held no special ceremony at home. It was enough for Kantun to offer prayers in quiet.
The widow and mother of three was at work as usual, her slim body submerged among the rows of tea plants.
The widow and mother of three was at work as usual, her slim body submerged among the rows of tea plants. However, her fingers adeptly sorted among the plants to pick the best tea shoots, one after another until her bamboo basket was full.
Kantun’s husband also used to work as a contract worker at the Sirah Kencong cluster, as did her parents, who have long since retired. Her father was a foreman and her mother a tea picker. It is common for a single family to work at the tea plantation through the generations.
Now that her husband is gone, Kantun is working as hard as she can to support her children. She is certain to volunteer when overtime is necessary. But the estate’s difficult situation means that such opportunities are extremely limited.
What has happened is “efficiency”. Wages have been cut. The maintenance costs have also been slashed, so that the harvest yield has shrunk. The pickers wages have become even more insufficient to meet their daily needs, let alone the cost of their children’s education.
Katun can’t even afford to send her children to senior high school. As a result, her eldest child had to drop out of junior high school. Her middle child graduated from junior high school, and then quit school. Meanwhile, her youngest is in the sixth grade.
Declining volume
According to Tri Utami, 51, another tea picker, the volume of tea shoots has been decreasing from day to day, in line with the declining maintenance of the estate.
In the past, a tea picker could harvest an average 1 quintal of fresh shoots per day during the rainy season. Today, the average is 30-40 kg per day. The same decline applies to the dry season harvest. A picker used to harvest 50 kg; now they can harvest only 10 kg per day.
Today, the Sirah Kencong pickers earn monthly wages of Rp 800,000 to Rp 1 million during the rainy season, while the dry season wages range from Rp 600,000 to Rp 700,000 per month.
The amount they harvest provides the basis for calculating the pickers’ wages. Thus, the declining volume of tea shoots grown at the estate is directly connected to the decline in the pickers’ wages. Today, the Sirah Kencong pickers earn monthly wages of Rp 800,000 to Rp 1 million during the rainy season, while the dry season wages range from Rp 600,000 to Rp 700,000 per month.
Painem, 42, another Sirah Kencong tea picker, said that the number of workers peaked in the 1990s, when six trucks were needed to transport the pickers from the villages every day. Now there are only two trucks per day. “Gradually, there will be none left. If the wages increase, people may be prepared to come back to work at the estate,” said Painem, who has worked at Sirah Kencong since 1994.
The issue facing the Sirah Kencong tea pickers is found at all tea plantations throughout Nusantara (the Indonesian archipelago). At Wonosari Estate in Malang, for instance, the number of pickers is shrinking with no regeneration.
Wariyasih, 49, a Wonosari tea picker, said today’s young people preferred to work at shops, factories or malls, because of the salaries there complied with the regency/municipal minimum wages.
In the meantime, tea pickers are hired on a contractual basis. This means that their wages depend on the amount of tea shoots they pick. The fewer shoots they harvest, the lower their wages.
Being a tea picker is also an unattractive job. Although it might require no high skills, Wariyasih explained that, for example, tea pickers must have extraordinary physical endurance. “When it’s hot, we suffer from the heat. When it rains, we get wet. That’s [part of] the job of being a tea picker,” said Wariyasih.
Being a tea picker for long, Wariyasih continued, would sooner or later lead to wrist pain. “I’ve frequently had to get a massage [for my] sore hands,” he added.
A variety of other, unpleasant experiences are common among tea pickers. Umisari, 56, a Wonosari tea picker, said she had been stung by bees while picking tea shoots on several occasions. Bees frequently build their hives in the tea plants.
Once, she even injured her hand while cutting weeds with her sickle. “The blood kept flowing, so I was promptly taken to the estate’s clinic,” said Umisari ,who has worked at Wonosari since 1982.
No youth interest
Bantaran Estate assistant head Bramantya Admaja said that young people showed no interest in working as tea pickers and preferred to be factory workers or market traders.
Consequently, Bantaran Estate has seen no new pickers over the last few years. This is also the case with all tea plantations in Indonesia. The tea pickers are all long-time workers aged 40-60.
Only around 140 tea pickers are left at the 325.14-hectare Bantaran Estate. At the ideal ratio of one picker per hectare, Bantaran Estate needs at least 300 tea pickers.
This is to expand to 60-70 percent in the future. The remainder must retain manual pickers due to the sloping terrain.
With the labor shortage, the Bantaran Estate and other tea plantations in Nusantara have turned more towards using machines, and 40 percent of Bantaran Estate is mechanized today. This is to expand to 60-70 percent in the future. The remainder must retain manual pickers due to the sloping terrain.
Bantaran Estate manager Supriadi said the job of tea pickers used to be handed down through the generations. But these days, the pickers’ children were unwilling to follow in their parents’ footsteps.
Indonesian Tea Council Chairman Rachmad Gunadi said that using machines at tea plantations would become inevitable in the future. The main issue was efficiency.
To illustrate, 160 workers were needed for the old way of wilting and drying the tea leaves for a daily production capacity of 50 tons. By means of new technology and a Rp 5 billion investment, only 10 workers are needed to produce the same amount. Besides which, the new method saves 45 percent of electricity and 50 percent of thermal power.
“But it’s also not recommended for the estates to shift from human labor to machines right now, for the reason that it is inevitable, without preparing the estate as a whole,” said Gunadi.
Japan had already proved this. But mechanical picking much be accompanied by efficient estate management.
Human pickers, Gunadi said, could guarantee a quality harvest. But picker machines could still maintain the quality of the tea shoots. Japan had already proved this. But mechanical picking much be accompanied by efficient estate management.
“In this transformational period, plantations should go ahead and mechanize if they are ready to use machines. Those that are more suited to manual labor should just continue manually. The remaining pickers can be concentrated in certain blocks [clusters] until, in due course, there are no more left, and then 100 percent mechanization will replace them,” said Gunadi.
Kantun and her fellow tea pickers are the last of a dying breed. Before long, they will grow old. A new dawn is coming: the machines of the fourth industrial revolution. This heralds the tragedy of Nusantara’s tea pickers.