Sri Lanka, June 24 -- More than 30,000 tea smallholders in the Badulla district have been in a predicament for want of a remunerative market for their raw tea leaves. They maintain that the tea smallholdings are running at a loss owing to the sharp drop of prices in raw leaves and the increasing cost of labour and fertilizer prices.

The tea smallholders pointed out that their request to the successive governments since long including the present government for a fertilizer subsidy has fallen on deaf ears.

A tea smallholder of Pugahakumbura, Anura Jayawardene said that the families that depend on the income from cultivating a few acres of tea have lost their livelihood. It is their main livelihood.

"The cost of labour has shot up to R...