Special duties become a ‘hot potato’ between DC and power engineers; technocrats launched pan Punjab protest from today
Kanwar Inder Singh/ royalpatiala.in News/ October 7,2024
In case any power, electricity related emergency situation erupt after 5 pm, the consumers of pan Punjab has to wait till 9 am in the morning to get it resolved as the mobile phones of power engineers’ from SDE to Chief Engineer level will remain switch off.
“All Powercom engineers will switch off their official mobile phones from Monday after office hours as a mark of protest against the high handedness of DC Bhatinda and this protest will continue until the withdrawal of such arbitrary duty orders issued by the DC” said the spokesperson of PSEB Engineers’ Association.
“An emergency meeting of the state executive of the PSEB Engineers’ Association was held at Bathinda on Sunday, October 6,2024 to address the issue of non-departmental duties to power engineers and the high-handed actions of the Deputy Commissioner Bathinda”. Ajay Pal Singh Atwal general secretary said that the DC Bathinda has threatened engineers with FIRs and issued show cause notices against them.
“The executive body unanimously condemned the behaviour and actions of the DC, deeming them unacceptable and a threat to ensuring energy security of the region. It was observed that whereas other district administrations have exempted the power sector from such duties but DC Bathinda failed to realise the importance of the power sector and the emergency nature of the service being rendered by the engineers and technical staff of PSPCL/ PSTCL. In case any further action is taken against any engineer, all engineers across Punjab will immediately proceed on mass casual leave” added Ajaypal Singh Atwal.
On the other hand, an officer of the Bathinda district administration on the condition of said “we had already informed the powercom officials to send us replacement of officers who are not posted in field duties to do checking of stubble burning in villages and for panchayat elections, if required. If any officer’s services are going to be required in the field, the district administration will immediately relieve him from administration duty. Moreover the officers didn’t attend the election related meeting. If they had given any representation, the administration would have taken that into consideration.”
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