Engineers wear black badges in support

Parvesh Sharma

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, June 29

Power engineers across the state today wore black badges against privatisation of sub-divisions. An engineers’ association also disowned the statement of three engineers, who had supported privatisation at the alleged behest of managements of power discoms.

KD Bansal, president of the association, said the power engineers were opposed to the move to handover the maintenance of transmission lines to the private sector instead of recruiting staff. Bansal further alleged that privatisation was against the interest of power consumers.

“We have been conducting regular meetings with the state power department authorities for our demands, but to no avail. However, the quickness with which it took the decision to hand over the subdivisions to the private sector shows that the welfare of employees and consumers is not the priorities of the government,” alleged Bansal.

“We condemn the statement of three engineers issued in support of privatisation to save their posting. The three individuals are neither our office bearers, nor they have any authority to issue such statement,” said Bansal.

Padamjit Singh, chief patron of the All-India Power Engineers’ Federation (AIPEF), said the federation strongly condemned invoking of ESMA and all actions of the state government to victimise the striking power workers. The AIPEF has urged the government to resolve the issue amicably by holding negotiations and refrain from undemocratic actions.

“The managements of the discoms are trying to spread wrong information about the strike by issuing fake statements through some engineers,” alleged Vinod Gupta, spokesman, AIPEF.