6 February 2019

Pregnant women are risking their lives to bring people tea

Rama is scared. She’s six months pregnant and increasingly worried about the health of her unborn child. The 22-year-old casual laborer earns her living by picking tea leaves in India’s north-eastern Assam state. She does not take a break from the hard labor even if she is in pain. “Sometimes I feel good, sometimes not so good,” she said. “I am new to this, so, I don’t know what to expect.” Her hut in a village near Tezpur in Assam’s Sonitpur district is one of dozens for workers within a fenced compound on the tea plantation that stretches for miles, surrounded by swathes of lush green fields making it beautiful, but extremely remote. “We are totally dependent on the tea garden,” she told CNN from her village.

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