A 12-hour shutdown called by striking tea garden workers Tuesday in four north Bengal districts evoked a near total response even as the indefinite stir in the gardens completed its ninth day.

The tea workers, under the banner of the Left-backed Coordination Committee for Plantation Workers (CCPW), enforced the shutdown Tuesday after a tripartite meet to break a wage revision impasse failed Saturday.

About 500,000 workers in about 346 tea gardens in Dooars area under the CCPW banner in north Bengal have struck work since July 11, demanding a revision of wages since the previous pay scale expired March 31, 2003.

The shutdown in the four districts of Darjeeling, Jalpaiguri, Cooch Behar and Uttar Dinajpur was peaceful, but no public transport plied and most of the shops, offices, educational institutions and other establishments remained closed.

There were reports of assault on some journalists in Uttar Dinajpur. Rail services were, however, kept outside the purview of the agitation.

The stir is causing immense hardship to the workers who were deprived of their ration provided by the garden owners. It is also causing a daily loss of Rs.100 million to the tea industry.

West Bengal Labour Minister Mohammad Amin said another meeting to resolve the crisis would be held Thursday at the state secretariat Writers' Buildings in Kolkata.

The minister also blamed the unbending attitude of the owners for the crisis.

The meeting between the state government, the tea workers' unions and the estate owners to arrive at an acceptable wage revision here failed Saturday when the workers refused the wage structure offered by the owners.

The garden owners offered a hike of one rupee every year in daily wages that the workers rebuffed. The tea labourers currently get a daily wage of Rs.45.90, which is not sufficient to sustain a family, said the workers' unions.

The Gorkha National Liberation Front (GNLF)-affiliated Himalayan Planters Workers' Union has resorted to an economic blockade in the hill gardens of Darjeeling by preventing the despatch of tea consignments.

The strike is a culmination of the tea workers' agitation for the past 27 months for an eight-point charter of demands, including enhanced wages.

Despite several meetings between the workers, the garden owners and the state government, new wages, which should have come into effect April 1, 2003, were not implemented.

"The tea workers in West Bengal are paid much lower wages compared to other states. The planters want to start a production-linked wage system to which we object," said Chitta Dey, convenor of CCPW, an apex body of 18 tea labour unions.

The garden owners, however, maintained that taking into account the almost free ration offered to workers unlike in other states, the wage amount is about Rs.88 daily.