A coffee plant usually starts to produce flowers three to four years after it is planted. The cherries appearing from the flowers have to be harvested by hand after they ripen. Women coolies were paid according to the quantity of coffee beans picked, and this piece rate decreased as the production rose. Moreover, anyone who picked unripe beans was fined. These wage modalities indicate that women were being exploited as the cheapest workers on the estates. Their absorption in the labour process was restricted by a clause in the Coolie Ordinance of 1880 which stipulated that they could do only light work such as sorting and sweeping roads. But in reality, they were made to do heavy work including breaking gravel and emptying sewage barrels.
