Nageshwari Tea Garden withdraws closure notice

The tea garden of the Duncans Group in Dooars, which was closed on Tuesday morning, has been reopened on Wednesday. 

It may be mentioned that the state government has taken several initiatives to reopen the closed tea gardens. 

Workers of the tea gardens rushed to join the work as soon as they came to know that the garden authorities had withdrawn the closure notice. 

There were around 2,800 employees, who had turned jobless with the closure of the garden. All of them joined the work today and they were happy as they do not have to look for some other means of livelihood. 

The workers assured all support to the garden authorities to keep the garden open. But they requested the authorities to clear some of their payments as they haven’t got wages since February 2015. Initially their payment became irregular and later it had stopped completely. 

According to the workers the production from the garden was good. But the authorities had closed it yesterday “due to some other issues”. But the decision to reopen the garden was taken following a meeting of the garden authorities. 

Senior government officials from the district had also interfered after knowing that the garden was closed.      

Ten tea workers died in the garden in the past 10 months.