African workers supersede Georgians in tea picking

Workers from African countries, who filled the void to pick tea in the northern province of Rize last year after the border was sealed for Georgian workers due to the coronavirus pandemic, have lent a hand to Turkish tea plantation owners this year too.

Workers from Gambia, Senegal, Sudan and Zambia, residing in Turkey with work permits, flocked to Rize to pick tea.

"Africans joined the tea harvest last year as Georgians could not come. It was interesting at first to see them, now we have got used to them," Fatih Aydın Hacıahmetoğlu, a local tea supplier, said.

African workers earn between 300 and 400 Turkish liras ($18,30 and $24,35) a day.

However, the presence of the foreign workers picking tea caused controversy in the region.

"Due to pandemic, many families picked tea on their own. We wish the families would continue this," Yusuf Ziya Alim, the general manager of Çaykur, a state-owned tea company, said.

He made a call to the locals to "pick their own tea," and "keep the money we give to foreign workers in our family budgets."

Serpil Kukul is one of those Rize residents that do not employ foreigners. "We wake up at 6 in the morning and pick tea until sunset. We harvest our tea on our own."

The tea harvesting season starts in spring on some 830,000 decares of land in the Black Sea provinces of Rize, Trabzon, Artvin and Giresun and more than 1 million tea-producing families gather to pick tea.

Until last year, Georgian and Azerbaijani workers used to "help the tea plantation owners."

According to estimations, foreign workers and seasonal workers from different provinces collect some 750,000 tons of tea annually.