Power Engineers to resume agitation from August 15 against PSPCL Management

Ludhiana, August 10, 2014: An emergency meeting of the State Executive Committee of PSEB Engineers Association was held on Saturday at Patiala to review and decide further course of action of their ongoing agitation for resolution of pending issues of Engineers including violation of Tripartite Agreement. There was a great resentment in the Executive Committee members regarding repeated postponement of the meeting with Sukhbir Singh Badal, Deputy Chief Minister, Punjab. Deputy CM, who holds the power ministry on June 19 this year, has called the Association for a meeting on July 7 to resolve the issues raised by the Association. Keeping in view the positive response by Deputy CM towards engineers’ demands and interests of power consumers particularly from agriculture sector as the paddy season was at its peak, Engineers’ Association as a sincere reciprocal gesture had on the same day June 19, 2014 suspended ‘work to rule’ and deferred other forms of agitation affecting the consumer services/ power supply like announcement of date for one day “mass casual leave”.

Unfortunately the meeting with Deputy CM has been postponed thrice and is now slated to be held on August 13. Even the process for appointment of new Directors of PSPCL in place of Directors whose tenure has expired has not been started so far after lapse of more than one and a half month although the Govt. has assured that the appointment process will be started within 10 days.

Executive members expressed their anguish and condemned the biased and partisan behaviour of the PSPCL Management towards power engineers. The members expressed concern that the PSPCL management is mischievously keeping the issues related to engineers pending despite clear cut written agreement to resolve the issues in a time bound manner. To further vitiate the industrial peace, the management is bending service rules to give benefit to other cadres at the cost of power engineers by amending the service regulations in gross violation of the tripartite agreement. There is acute shortage of staff in the field which is adversely affecting the consumer services and the management instead of finding the solution to this problem is issuing charge sheets to the field engineers on trivial issues in spite of grave working conditions. PSPCL management has created the mess which led to non/less supply of Coal to state owned thermals from its own captive coal mine by PANEM. Instead of in house reform initiatives unscrupulous middlemen are being invited through reckless outsourcing, which is being considered as panacea for all the ills.

PSPCL Management is deliberately denying the meeting to PSEB Engineers’ Association. Executive Committee has decided to hold protest meetings on August 11 at all regional (Circle) headquarters of Punjab to protest against repressive attitude of PSPCL Management towards power engineers. The Association has decided to resume the agitation aggressively from August 15, 2014 onwards in case PSPCL Management does not grant immediate meeting to the Association. Apart from disturbing industrial peace agitation may affect power supply and consumer services and responsibility of the same would lie with the Management.The form of agitation will be decided and announced by office bearers of Association on August 15, 2014.

Executive committed hoped that in the August 13, 2014 meeting with Deputy CM all the issues relating to the State Government raised by the Association will be resolved. The executive appeals to Deputy Chief Minister, Punjab to instruct PSPCL Management to hold immediate meeting with the Association to resolve other issues of power engineers pending with the management so that the engineers can whole heartedly channelise their energies towards their duties for serving the consumers of the state.