Tea growing facing labour shortages

Shortage. The available workers are unable to pluck the leaf on time, leading to few plucking rounds.

Tea could be one of Uganda’s leading foreign exchange earners but it is currently grappling with labour shortage, forcing players to resort to mechanised tea-plucking to keep in business.

Mpanga Growers Tea Factory general manager Adolf Sabiiti, told this newspaper that even the few available workers are also unable to pluck the leaf on time, resulting few plucking rounds in a month.
Tea contributed $73.9 million, out of the $2.35 billion worth of exports last year, up from Shs72.1 million out of $2.1 billion total exports in 2011.

Although tea-plucking machines are said to increase production by over 50 per cent and enable uniform sprouting of tea leaves as opposed to handpicking, it compromises the quality of the green leaf and results into prolonged tea plucking rounds as compared to hand plucking because the machine cuts all leaves including those which were just sprouting at ago.

On average, a tea-plucking machine, which is operated by three workers, can pick about 300 Kg daily compared to between 80 – 150 Kg that can be handpicked by a person over the same time and can substitute about 17 persons.

Mr Rogers Siima, the general manager Uganda Tea Cooperation, attributed the scarcity of labour on the plantations to people migrating to towns in search of better opportunities and people looking at tea plucking as an odd job.

“The tea sector is a labour intensive one yet fewer people nowadays want to work on plantations. Mechanising will be the only solution, otherwise we shall have to abandon the plantations. ,” Mr Siima said.
In Kenya, tea-plucking machines caused trouble as workers went on strike protesting substituting their jobs with tea-plucking and pruning machines.

Tea-plucking machines reduce the dependence on human labour; hence, reducing costs in the long run.
Mr Mike Wright, Senior Blender for the London-based Twining Tea factory, said hand-picking tea ensures selective plucking of tea leaves which produces good quality final product.

Uganda’s tea sector is also grappling with challenges like lack of a fertiliser policy and high importation costs that have hindered farmers from applying fertilisers; hence, poor yields and low tea poor quality.

fkulabako@ug.nationmedia.com