TMC no to tea strike

TT, Nov. 27: District Trinamul leaders and trade unions leaders of the party Darjeeling and Jalpaiguri today said that they would oppose the tea industry strike called by the Joint Forum on December 1 as the majority of gardens were functioning normally.

While the Joint Forum has the Left-backed Citu and the Congress-backed Intuc among its constituents, Trinamul's tea union is not a part of it.

The Joint Forum, considered the biggest platform of tea trade unions, has called the strike to protest the ongoing impasse at the tea estates of the Duncans group and several other issues.

"We will oppose the strike as it has been called by Citu and a few other tea trade unions with political intentions. Only a few tea estates are close and tea estates owned by a particular tea group are not functioning well due to certain reasons," said Sourav Chakraborty, the district president of Trinamul in Jalpaiguri and Alipurduar.

"The majority of tea estates are functioning smoothly and we find no logic behind this strike which would affect tea industry in north Bengal as a whole," he said.