Thondaman’s last plea: Rs. 1,000 as daily wage for plantation workers

Minister Arumugam Thondaman’s last engagement before he died was a call on Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa at the PM’s Wijerama residence this week.

Premier Rajapaksa said he brought along with him the copy of a Cabinet Memorandum he had submitted earlier. It had called for the increase of the daily wage of a plantation worker to Rs 1,000.

The PM said besides that, he also gave him a note which said that workers had not been paid their Employees Trust Fund ( ETF) or Employees Provident Fund (EPF) moneys.

“His actions showed that he always had the plantation workers’ interests at heart,” Premier Rajapaksa noted. “He appealed to me to resolve the two issues he raised,” the Premier added.

Before calling on Premier Rajapaksa, Mr Thondaman had called on the Indian High Commissioner, Gopal Baglay.

At Premier Rajapaksa’s residence, his last words were with security officers. He urged them to visit Nuwara Eliya soon with both the President and the Prime Minister. When he returned to his Colombo home, he had suffered a heart attack.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is among those who had sent in his condolences. The plantation workers were earlier classified as ‘Tamils of recent Indian origin’ before they were granted Sri Lankan citizenship under President J.R. Jayewardene through the efforts of Arumugam Thondaman’s grandfather, the great trade union leader S. Thondaman who was a god-like figure to the plantation workers.