CHANDIGARH: UT Power men Union has called a protest rally in Sector 17 on November 22 to protest against the privatisation of the electricity department in Chandigarh. In the protest rally employees of different departments of UT, electricity employees and engineers of different institutions and organisations will also participate, said Gopal Joshi, general secretary of the power union. He further said that we will not allow the service conditions of electricity employees to be tampered with under the guise of privatization.
Raghveer Chand President said that the administration is playing with the future of the employees by starting the process of LOI without fixing the service conditions of the electricity employees and going back on the promises made earlier. The matter was discussed in the meeting that in 2022, the former advisor of Chandigarh who had accepted the mistake and the officials are again repeating the mistakes and forcing the employees to struggle again.
The meeting decided that if the administration moves forward in the bidding matter without taking a concrete decision on the interests of the employees, then the Federation will directly join this struggle of the electricity employees and in this regard.
It may be mentioned that the High court has earlier dismissed power employees’ petition, saying their service conditions were protected by the Electricity Act. According to the HC, the scope of judicial review in a policy matter is extremely narrow.
The union is of the view that the administration was selling 100% stake of the government in the absence of such a provision under Section 131 of the Electricity Act, 2003. Moreover , the department was running into profits and its revenue had been surplus for the past three years, still it was being privatised.
Shailendra Dubey, Chairman All India Power Engineers Federation (AIPEF) said that they stand with Chandigarh power men in their fight against privatisation. In a similar situation the privatisation process of the electricity department in Puducherry was stopped after the intervention of AIPEF. The section 133(2) of Electricity Act provided safeguard to employees for not transferring employees on less favourable service conditions under any transfer scheme.