By IANS,
Kolkata : Industry leaders here are bitter over the loss of a working day and all it entails as Left-supported trade unions went on a countrywide strike Wednesday, crippling normal life in West Bengal.
“We want a complete bandh (shutdown) on bandhs,” Sanjay Budhia, president of Indian Chamber of Commerce and Industry and managing director of Patton Ltd, told IANS.
Irrespective of the party that calls it, none of these strikes serve any purpose other than affecting the common man adversely, he said.
“The daily wage earners are the worst affected because of these strikes,” Budhia said. “We should protest through discussions rather than going on strike.”
“These strikes hit the image of the state. Definitely work will be affected. We are closing operations for the day and are talking to clients to re-schedule work,” S. Radhakrishnan, president of the Bengal Chamber of Commerce & Industry and CEO of BPO Descon, told IANS.
“To compensate we are working on Saturday,” he added.
This time, the shutdown has not spared the Information Technology (IT) hub in the city’s Salt Lake suburb either. BPO firms, which operate 24X7, were also closed Wednesday.
“Though it is a nationwide strike but this is happening in West Bengal only. The others units of the company situated in various part of the country are functioning normally,” said Sandipan Chakravortty, managing director, Tata Ryerson Limited and deputy chairman of the Confederation of Indian Industry.
“It is unfortunate that strikes only happen over here. It projects a negative image of the state,” he said.
The shutdown is to protest the economic policies of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government at the centre.