Sri Lankan tea workers are facing increasing hardship as the Iran war increases energy prices and reduces demand for tea exports, reports Al Jazeera.
“We don’t know whether we can cope. If this war continues, many people will face hardship,” Jacintha Malar, a worker at the Dunkeld Tea Estate in Hatton, Sri Lanka, told the Reuters news agency.
Malar has switched to using firewood to cook meals for her family, after the war increased cooking gas prices. Tea workers are also facing uncertainty amid falling exports.
According to Sri Lanka’s Export Development Board (EDB), export earnings fell 17.3 percent year-on-year in March to $114.75 million.
This was in part due to a 38 percent drop in demand from Iraq, the largest tea buyer, while shipments to the United Arab Emirates plunged 93 percent amid disruption to shipping and transport logistics, EDB data showed.
“We have absorbed the costs for a while, but fuel costs and knock-on effects on logistics, whether between Perth and Melbourne or Colombo and Dubai, are fuelling inflation everywhere,” said Dilhan Fernando, chairman and chief executive of Dilmah Ceylon Tea Company PLC.
Bd-pratidin English/TR
