Report by Kamgar Ekta Committee correspondent
The Uttar Pradesh Vidyut Karmachari Sanyukta Sangharsh Samiti has strongly objected to the Power Corporation management’s practice of routinely calling electricity workers on duty even on weekly rest days and festivals. The Sangharsh Samiti stated that while it is acceptable for employees to be called in during emergencies to keep the power supply running smoothly, the management has turned this into a regular practice, which is unacceptable to the Sangharsh Samiti.
This is happening because of a massive number of vacancies that the management has been ignoring for years. Making existing employees over-work in this manner adversely affects their health and family life, while also leading to deficiencies in providing services to consumers. The Sangharsh Samiti has presented vacancy data multiple times, but the management does not listen.
For instance, in the year 2000, there were 1,20,000 regular employees and about 60 lakh consumers. Now, the number of consumers has increased more than 6-fold to approximately 3.73 crore, while the number of regular employees has dropped to about 30,000. Therefore, the Sangharsh Samiti has demanded an immediate halt to this unfair practice. They have also demanded that if anyone has to work extra duty for emergency work, they should be given compensatory leave or double pay according to the rules.
This is the situation in almost all public sector industries. Therefore, immediate recruitment to fill vacancies is a demand around which the unity of all unions and organizations working across the public sector can be strengthened.