Children in tea industry: Amnesty alleges child labour, debt bondage
A new Amnesty International report has alleged widespread child labour, barriers to education, and debt-linked exploitation affecting children from the Malaiyaha Tamil community living and working on Sri Lanka’s private tea estates, with some as young as 14 reportedly being pushed into labour due to poverty, inherited debt, and precarious labour arrangements. The report, titled ‘Abandoned by the State, Trapped in Private Estates,’ drew on investigations conducted between January 2024 and January 2026 and painted a picture of entrenched poverty, insecure employment, and poor living conditions within parts of the private estate sector. The report was launched last week (28).
According to Amnesty International, low wages and the increasing casualization of labour created conditions in which families struggled to survive, forcing children into tea-plucking and other work on estates.
The report stated that adult workers on some estates and smallholdings earned between approximately Rs. 1,350 and Rs. 1,750 per day, which Amnesty argued remained below a living wage. Among the cases highlighted was a 14-year-old girl who reportedly began working to support her mother and younger sisters. Despite receiving a reduced ‘casual’ wage of Rs. 750 because of her age, the report stated that she was still expected to meet adult tea-plucking targets of between 25 kg and 28 kg of tea leaves per day.
