The Real Cost of a Cuppa

He finds degrading and dangerous conditions

on tea estates that supply some of the world's favourite tea brands.

You probably drink tea grown here, in Assam, every day.

But what the big brands don't tell you is what it is like

for the people who grow the tea.

Their houses are in a terrible state...

So is that the whole close down there...

..their

toilets are worse.

Their working conditions aren't safe and they are paid less even than

the local minimum wage.

Poverty forces children to work alongside their parents.

The result - tea plantation workers and

their families suffer some of the highest rates of the most serious

diseases of poverty, including TB.

Tea is one of the most popular drinks in the

world, but are the workers paying the real cost of your daily cuppa?

You probably drink the famous black tea grown here in Assam every day.

Think of the full flavour of the average tea bag,

or English breakfast tea.

That is a taste of Assam.

This one region grows half the tea produced in India, but

we've discovered its idyllic looking tea gardens hide a dark secret.

Our investigation begins at night.

This is an estate that supplies Twinings, Yorkshire Tea, Harrods,

and Fortnum Mason.

These are what is known as the labour lines,

this is where the workers live?

Yes, these are the labour lines.

Tea plantation owners in India are obliged by law to

provide and maintain adequate houses and sanitary toilets for workers.

But this woman shares a small house with six other people and hasn't had

a working toilet for 36 years.

I have been telling the managers that we need a toilet ever since it

broke, but they just don't listen.

How many times can we ask?

She told us she has no choice but to go in the tea bushes.

This is one of the most prestigious tea gardens

in all of Assam, but it is not just the toilets that are broken.

This is the kitchen area?

We were shown houses in terrible conditions with leaking

roofs and cracked walls.

He says he keeps complaining that his house is falling down and the

management said they will come and fix it, but he says they never do.

If he has been waiting ten years, then that is a long time to wait

for your wall to be rebuilt.

This is not reasonable for our people.

So how much do people earn here for one day's work?

A crowd has gathered outside the local shop.

I want to know if the workers here know just how celebrated and

valuable the tea they grow here is.

That's from Fortnum and Mason, one of the finest stores in Britain,

This is really from our garden?

This is from your garden.

How many grams of tea are in it?

Here we have 50 grams of tea.

This would cost you 750 rupees, in Indian rupees.

Wow!

750 rupees.

This costs 750 rupees?

What do we get in return?

We get nothing.

Our roofs are leaking and we can't even sleep at night.

All we get in return is hardship.

How long would you have to work in order to buy one packet

of tea like this?

She tells me it would take these workers more than a week to earn

enough to buy this 50 grams of tea.

We come back in the morning.

It seems life here hasn't changed much since Queen Victoria awarded

the area a Royal Charter way back in 1845.

One of the supervisors on the estate calls the workers, telling

them what part of the plantation they will be working on today.

"Don't be late", he orders.

Tea estates work on a colonial system of payment in kind.

Under the law that governs estates like this, the Plantation Labour

Act, plantation owners must give permanent workers a decent home.

But they take it out of their wages.

It is how they justify paying people below the minimum wage in Assam.

Tea workers earn just $1.70 a day.

Daylight confirms this plantation doesn't seem to be honouring

its side of the bargain.

This man has a water pump, but you wouldn't want to drink

the water that comes out of it.

This is where you get your water and this is your toilet next to it.

Can you show me the toilet?

He has a toilet building.

What he is saying is that the septic tank for the toilet is full to

overflowing and they have had to dig this pit and now the waste

from the toilet flows in here.

But this is right next to your water supply.

Is that healthy?

This certainly isn't.

The whole place is damp.

It is like looking up at the stars you can see through so many holes.

This is the fresh water supply for a family flooded

by the overflowing cesspit.

Would you drink from here?

At least the pigs are happy.

I'm shocked by how the tea workers are forced to live.

This area is one of the most famous tea estates in all of Assam

and we are told the conditions found here are commonplace throughout

the industry, including at some of the plantations that supply

the world's biggest tea brands.

You won't have heard of McLeod Russel,

but you will almost certainly have drunk the tea this company grows.

It is the biggest tea producer in the world and these are some of

the homes it provides for workers.

Its estates in Assam supply tea to Liptons,

PG Tips, Tetley, and Twinings.

on the estate we showed earlier.

Homes have broken roofs.

Imagine living here when the monsoon comes.

In other houses, walls are soaking wet.

There is damp on the walls, you can clearly see that.

This wall is very damp.

And this toilet.

Wow, this place is infested with mosquitoes.

This place is little more than a slum.

Every house has visible damp.

Most of them say they just go to the toilet among the tea bushes.

We had been on the estate for about an hour

when we get word that the plantation manager wants to speak to us.

You are the assistant manager?

We are seeing the manager.

The estate manager admits there is what he calls a huge backlog

of repairs.

What they say is they defecate on the tea bushes.

Is that acceptable?

That is not acceptable.

There is a legal obligation to provide adequate toilet facilities.

We are proposing it and the company will start to find...

Would you be proud to take people to the labour lines

and show people who drink PG Tips or Liptons and show them the conditions

under which your workers live?

Would you feel proud of the conditions?

In some places, yes.

All of the people are not like that.

In some lines it is very poor and in other places it is good.

I don't understand how you can think it is acceptable to have

conditions that are very poor.

of how to live, and their literacy.

of how to live, and their literacy.

These are the four things that we are trying to improve.

Slowly, slowly doesn't seem consistent with the commitment that

the world's biggest tea companies make to ethical sourcing.

Unilever, who own Lipton and PG Tips, advertises its brews as

Meanwhile the company that owns Tetley tea says it is committed to

the fair and ethical treatment of people across its supply chain.

possibly claim not to know about the terrible conditions here in Assam.

This estate is owned by another giant tea grower,

and it is half owned by Tata.

In January last year, a major academic study found breaches of

the law in relation to conditions.

It says workers live in cramped and crowded quarters with cracked

walls and broken roofs.

It says the lack of toilet facilities has turned some living

areas into a network of cesspools.

Tata told the BBC it is addressing a number of serious social issues

on the APPL estate.

It says it is funding major works to improve living conditions.

Campaigners say the terrible conditions

on some estates are the result of the deep rooted culture of control.

We experience that culture of control first-hand another of McLeod

Russel's giant tea plantations.

The right of public access is supposed to enable people to visit

them to check up on their welfare.

This estate is owned by a tea company called McLeod Russel.

We hear the same now depressingly familiar stories of leaking roofs

and broken toilets.

This woman is telling me she has never had the toilet or

electricity when a jeep arrives.

Hello, sir.

We are from the BBC.

This is a private property.

No, this is the labour lines, isn't it?

This is a private company and a private farm.

You cannot enter without permission.

You're trespassing.

We were invited on to the labour lines...

But it is a private farm.

Behave yourself, sir.

We have every right.

We can access those parts of the plantation

where the workers are housed.

You are not a member of the public.

I am a member of the public.

What do you think I am?

This is the Plantation Labour Act of 1951 that regulates tea estates

like this.

It says "access to the public of those parts of the plantation where

the workers are housed is a right."

It is wrong for them to try and stop us doing this.

Out of courtesy, we decide to take up his offer to

discuss matters in his office.

That turns out to be a mistake.

When we decide we want to leave, the manager tells us he will not let

us go.

You are holding us prisoner.

You can't do that.

I am filming.

Stop filming.

In a statement, McLeod Russel admitted it keeps

a strict vigil on visitors.

You have to let us out.

It says tea estates have been the target of militant activity

in the past.

Perhaps we shouldn't be surprised that plantation owners

are anxious about visitors.

Lots of Indians live in dismal housing, but remember tea workers

have a legal right to a decent home.

Even the association that represents the tea estate owners

accept that some tea workers are not getting what they deserve.

She lives in a damp house...

Have you investigated her name?

Yeah, we've got her name.

Can you give it to me?

I'll give it to you.

We showed him footage of what we had found in the tea estates.

This is not an isolated incident.

Across the labour lines we found people with similar stories.

This was from a garden that supplies Harrods, Yorkshire Tea,

Taylors of Harrogate, some of the biggest and most prestigious

names in the tea industry.

We can show you our footage.

We can show you broken toilets.

The situation is not good, I understand that.

That is no excuse for having people living in terrible conditions.

It is not the philosophy of any management for it to be like this.

Your workers have the indignity of having to defecate

on the tea plants.

I will investigate this.

It is not acceptable.

This man had to dig his own toilet cesspit.

These are management lapses.

Open defecation and cesspools are not acceptable to me.

But we did not just find bad conditions.

Alongside the adults, we found this young girl picking tea.

She told us she was 14 years old.

There is no food in our house she said.

She says she has been picking tea for two months now.

Her father is mentally ill, her mother said.

We have no choice because she has to work to bring

in money for the family.

We met two other girls who said they had been employed full-time

since their early teens on estates owned by Assam Company.

At first, the company said it could not work.

I told them my family has financial problems

and then they said I could work.

The UN rules say that no child under 15 should work full-time.

We found other serious breaches of international standards,

not to mention Indian law.

Here, workers are spraying chemicals with no protection.

Assam Company supplies Twinings, Yorkshire tea, Harrods,

and for Norman Mason.

The team supervisors said that workers regularly

suffer side-effects.

The sprayers should have face facemasks, gloves, and shoes.

The company sometimes gives us the gear but it doesn't last.

We have to work without it.

It isn't long before a manager turns up.

He doesn't want to be identified but he confirms they are spraying

pesticides.

The pesticide is classified as a harmful or fatal poison

and the official advice is that goggles, a face mask, overalls,

gloves, and rubber boots should be worn around using it.

Away from the cameras, workers said they almost always had to spray

without protective equipment, and they frequently suffered

side-effects including breathing difficulties, numbness in the hands

and face, and loss of appetite.

Assam Company denied any wrongdoing on health

and safety or any other issue.

They said all the allegations made in this film are false.

McLeod Russel and all the big brands mentioned in this documentary

We have seen some shocking things on our journey through

the tea estates of Assam.

The worst comes at the end, when we visit the local hospital.

That is where we discovered the deadly consequences

of the combination of squalid conditions and low wages.

Studies show rates of malnutrition on tea estates

in Assam are significantly higher than India's abysmal standards.

The doctors here say virtually all the patients they see from tea

plantations are malnourished, and the weaker a patient is

the more vulnerable they are.

If you have severe malnutrition, then any small illness can be

a major problem.

A sign that somebody is malnourished will change the response they have

for an infection.

The doctor describes a cycle of malnutrition and disease.

They come in with a respiratory problem and he gets treated with the

appropriate antibiotics and dietary advice and we send him back, and he

goes back to the same environment from which he came, and then he is

exposed to the same problems.

Too often, she says, the children died.

Tea workers should be better off than their peers

because the law guarantees them a decent home and sanitation.

The shocking truth is that they are worse off.

That should leave a bitter taste in all our mouths.

Hello there.

Well, for most of us, it was a wet rather than white Christmas.