Without wages for three months

Denied wages, ration and medical care, about 2400 people including workers and their family members are trapped in a modern version of enslavement at Boikunthapur Tea Estate in Habiganj. Fourteen weeks into this situation, they are surviving on liquid extract from boiled rice, mashed tea leaves and chilies. Is this really happening in a civilsed country? How can the management stop paying the workers the pittance they call wages, about Tk 85 a day, on grounds that it has incurred financial losses? 

The woes of the labourers in some tea gardens in Bangladesh are nothing new. But the ongoing 'crisis' in Habiganj has broken all previous records. The lone hospital in the tea garden remains closed for the last six months.  Children of labourers have stopped going to school. Is there no one to see their suffering? Can the local administration do nothing to hold the management of the Boikunthapur Tea Estate accountable for violating the rights and dignity of its workers? 

We should be outraged over what's happening to the labourers of the tea garden. But we should also be mortified by the apparent indifference of the authorities toward them.  The journey of development that the country has embarked upon should include all.