Report by Kamgar Ekta Committee (KEC) correspondent
Vidyut Karmachari Sanyukt Kruti Samiti Uttar Pradesh has once again demanded that UP Power corporation must immediately carry out a thorough exercise of cadre restructuring of all cadres of workers and employees, and increase number of workers at all levels keeping in mind tremendous increase in the number of electricity consumers over last nine years.
Samiti pointed out that on the one hand UP power corporation management very proudly announces that UP-Power corporation has maximum number of consumers in the country but completely ignores the plight of its employees. Sangharsh samiti has stated that in the year 2000 there were around 60 lakh consumers and 1.2 lakh employees, whereas today there are less than 30000 permanent employees whereas the number of consumers has increased by more than six times to around 3.75 crores. To make matters worse, towards privatization drive around 25000 contract workers have been removed from service.
Inadequate workforce not only tremendously increase burden of work on the current employees but also adversely impacts service to consumers.
Samiti has also demanded that enough promotional avenues should also be created so that employees do not get demoralised by remaining in the same grade or position for many years.
Sangharsh Samiti also pointed out that on top of all this, UP power corporation has forcibly implemented Vertical system of Power distribution, despite strong and logical opposition by the samiti. This step has been taken by UP government to prepare and make power distribution suitable for privatization. As a part of implementing this new system, a large number of permanent jobs have been made redundant and huge number of contract workers i.e. contract workers have been sacked. All this has resulted in tremendous increase of workload. Earlier one Assistant Engineer used to handle 3 to 4 sub centres, but now is responsible for 8 to 10 sub centres. Many technical people have been assigned additional work of bill collection due to which maintenance of sub-centres and electricity supply lines has been adversely affected, leading to increased number of faults and increase in fault rectification time. Hence they have been demanding that the newly implemented Vertical system should be immediately scrapped, old system is reinstated, vacancies must be immediately filled and sacked experienced contract workers be reinstated.
Situation is similar in the entire power sector across the country.
Huge vacancies and reduction of permanent employees is a problem faced by all the public sector enterprises. Whether public sector banks or Indian railways or various state transport enterprises, or public health hospitals and dispensaries, or schools and colleges, or coal and other mines, or telecommunication or insurance or steel manufacturing or various state government departments, in all these, the number of consumers they serve have increased many folds in last 3 decades whereas number of permanent employees have dramatically reduced. Thus, recalculation of workforce necessary to properly serve all the consumers and filling up of all vacancies by permanent employees is a common unifying demand which all the workers working in Public Sector Enterprises need to raise in unison as an uncompromising demand.
It is necessary for all the working people to support these just demands.