Report of the Kamgar Ekta Committee (KEC) correspondent
The on-going non-cooperation movement of power engineers/junior engineers of Uttar Pradesh and the movement to go on mass leave from April 4 to 6 have been postponed after the State Energy Minister’s clear promise of solving all the problems as well as creating a better working environment in the energy corporations.
The intensity of the agitation forced the Energy Minister to hold talks. Although the power management had issued an order that no employee would be on leave from April 4 to 6, about 6,000 engineers had applied for mass leave and the number was expected to reach 10,000 by April 4. The Chief Engineer, Superintending Engineers, Assistant Engineers were among those who put in the leave applications.
Representatives of the UP Rajya Electricity Parishad Abhiyanta Sangh and Junior Engineer Sangathan held detailed talks with the Energy Minister on 2nd April. The representatives of the organizations apprised the Energy Minister point-wise in detail about the dictatorial, repressive attitude of the top management of the energy corporations, corruption at the top level and the atmosphere of fear prevailing in the energy corporations and gave him a written memorandum on all the issues.
The Energy Minister assured the representatives of the organizations that cooperation of all the organizations would be taken to improve the power system and not only a healthy work environment would be created but a better working environment would be created.
The Energy Minister also issued instructions that the management of energy corporations should give written comments on the corruption cases raised by the organizations, especially ERP scam, smart meter purchase, non-payment of funds to the cheapest electricity generating corporation to buy coal and purchase of electricity from the market at Rs. 21 per unit, the appointment of a large number of consultants, etc., so that action could be taken on them.
The written minutes of the said talks have been issued by the UP Power Corporation management. It has also been written in the minutes that no coercive action will be taken against any employee, junior engineer and engineer due to the agitation.
Er. Shailendra Dubey, Er. Pallab Mukherjee, Er .G. B. Patel, Er. Prabhat Singh, Er. Jai Prakash, Er. Adalat Verma, Er. Alok Kumar Srivastava, Er. Dinesh Kumar Prajapati participated in the talks on behalf of the union/organization.