Change direct speech to indirect speech

Tia said, “Neena works very hard.”

Direct speech is that speech that is used to repeat or quote the exact words spoken. Indirect speech is that speech that tells you what someone said but does not use the person's actual words. Option A is correct because, in direct speech, we find the reporting verb in the past tense, "said", so we will change the tense of the verb inside the quotation marks to the past tense. So, "work becomes" "worked". Option B is wrong because the tense of the verb is not changed.