Thermal plant employees seek timely salary

Tribune News Service

Bathinda, June 22

Employees of the Guru Nanak Dev Thermal Plant staged a protest against the state government, Powercom and POSCO Company here on Friday.

After the closure of the thermal plant, contractual employees have been assigned field duties. As per the agreement, they have been recruited by POSCO Company. The protesters said despite working for two months, they had not received their salary.

“We have been facing problems in making our both ends meet due to a meagre salary. We have also been working 12 hours a day, which is against the labour laws. During our agitation against the closure of thermal plants, we were demanding travel allowances if we were posted more than 10 km away from our home town,” said the protesters.

Raising slogans against the government and the firm, they said field workers had not been given any vehicle and there was no provision for treatment in case an employee got injured in an accident. The employees also demanded the mobile allowance.

Union leaders Gurwinder Singh, Karamjit Singh, Khushdeep Singh, Satvir Singh, Ravinder Singh and Jasveer Singh said Powercom was running away from its promises made in the agreement.

Besides timely salaries, the leaders demanded pending salaries at the earliest. There other demand is a hike in their salaries as per inflation.