Power engineers on warpath against its management; power crises may loom in Punjab
Kanwar Inder Singh/ royalpatiala.in/ Chandigarh
Though the Kissan unions in Punjab has decided to clear the railway tracks for transportation of coals for Punjab’s thermal plants, who are facing acute coal shortage, to overcome the power crises, but, the Power engineers on warpath against its management; power crises may loom in Punjab and the engineers has decided to go on “work to rule” from today- October 22,2020, in all the three thermal plants of Punjab state power corporation limited- GHTP Lehra Mohabbat, GGSSTP Ropar and GNDTP Bathinda, in protest the indifferent attitude of its management.The engineers association is also planning to intensify their agitation in coming days, which may create power crises in Punjab.
Under the Work-to-rule, the engineers will work for stipulated eight hours every day and no work on holidays. They said the PSPCL/ PSTCL engineers would work strictly as per rules and would not put extra hours or work on holidays against the decision of the management of the Powercom and Transcom, which are against the employees and the organization.
The management of the Punjab state power corporation limited has stopped the Generation Incentive (GI), given to the employees, working in the government owned power generation plants, since 1980’s. Generation Incentive is a part of the salary of the employees, who work at the power generation plants/ thermal plants.
Spokesman of the PSEB Engineers Association (PSEBA) has said, “The association has already informed the management of the PSPCL and PSTCL about the decision of the engineers association to Work-to-rule system and if the demands of PSEBEA were not met, they would intensify their agitation and the management would be responsible for disturbance of industrial peace”
When asked, what are demands of the PSEBEA, that they raised with the management, the Er Ajaypal Singh Atwal, secretary PSEBEA said, “PSPCL and PSTCL management has become indifferent to the issues of engineers like start scale, NPS, GPF/Terminal Benefit Funding, timely promotions etc. Now the management’s unilateral withdrawal of Generation Incentive (GI) is another step in this direction and is a serious violation of the tripartite agreement (TPA)/ transfer scheme wherein it has been stipulated that pay and allowances of the engineers and employees of the successor companies of PSEB will be protected.”
He further said that, “there is huge resentment among power engineers due to the indifferent attitude of the PSPCL/PSTCL managements. The Office Bearers of PSEBEA in their online meeting held on 19/10/2020 discussed the illegal action of unilateral withdrawal of GI and transfer of GNDTP land without realisation by the PSPCL management. It has been decided that engineers of GNDTP Bathinda, GHTP Lehra Mohabbat and GGSSTP Ropar will start “Work to rule” from 22-10-2020 onwards to protest against the various pending demands.
Atwal added that the “association demands the immediate withdrawal of these illegal decisions and the resolution of pending demands otherwise the agitation will be further intensified and management will be responsible for disturbance of industrial peace.”
When contacted the PSPCL director finance Jatinder Kumar Goyal, he said” the board of directors has taken the decision to stop the Generation Incentive. The management is on cost cutting mode. Moreover our thermal plants are working only for few days in a year and the generation incentive comes to a nominal amount, for few employees. We have to look into every aspect, to save the organization money. By stopping GI,we can save 50-60 lacs a year ”
October 22,2020
