"We restarted work this morning," Fidele Dogba of
the day workers' union Sytrajop-CI, which had launched the strike last week,
told Reuters. He said the union had been talking since late on Monday with the
country's Labour Ministry.
"As a prelude to pursuing negotiations, they asked us
... to suspend the strike ... and we accepted," Dogba said.
Although the strike took place at the tail end of the October
to March main crop, it left truckloads of cocoa beans unloaded at the main
ports of Abidjan and San Pedro in the world's top cocoa grower. Exporters had
said they were worried about the beans spoiling.
Nevertheless, some exporters said support for the strike was
only partial in the western port of San Pedro and some cocoa suppliers had
already started sending their trucks there.
