Alappuzha: Nobel laureate and renowned bio-physicist Michael Levitt faced a harrowing time on Wednesday, when the houseboat he was travelling in with his family, was stopped by the supporters of trade union strike at R-Block, a village near this town in Kerala on Wednesday. The agitating pro-Left trade union workers tied the houseboat with a mast for two hours causing much hardship for the tourists. Several house boats were stopped from 0700 hrs to 1230 hrs by the activists as part of the 24 hours nationwide strike which began at 0000 hrs on Wednesday. Notably, the oganisations which called for the nationwide strike had yesterday declared that the tourism sector would be exempted from the strike.
Despite this, alleged CITU workers rushed to the houseboat in their country boats and forcibly dragged it to the shore and tied it. Micheal Levitt and his wife were travelling to Kuttanad from Kumarakam in the houseboat. When the incident was brought to the notice of party''s Alappuzha district leadership, they intervened and freed the houseboat immediately. Meanwhile, Houseboat owners association said the incident will be a setback to the tourism industry and send a wrong message abroad. Michael Levitt, an American-British-Israeli biophysicist and a professor of structural biology at Stanford University, received the 2013 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, together with Martin Karplus and Arieh Warshel, for ''the development of multiscale models for complex chemical systems.
Ten central trade unions have called for Bharat Bandh against government''s "anti-people' policies. TUCC, SEWA, AIUTUC, INTUC, AITUC, HMS, CITU, AICCTU, LPF, UTUC, along with various bank employee associations are reportedly participating in the stir.
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