Fearing arrest, union leaders go into hiding

Parvesh Sharma

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, June 28

Fearing arrest, a majority of the senior leaders of the power corporation employees went into hiding today. Dissatisfied with the response of the state government, employees of the power corporation decided to go ahead with their proposed two-day strike which would start at 10 pm today.

“The government is deliberately creating problems just to defame the power sector employees. Yesterday, all senior officers of the government did not hear us properly and remained adamant that they would not scrap the contract of the 23 subdivisions,” alleged Kanwar Singh Yadav, state president of the Haryana State Electricity Workers’ Union, and a senior member of the Joint Action Committee.

Yadav and other union leaders had left their homes after the authorities threatened to implicate them in police cases if they went ahead with their strike call.

“Seniors officials have started threatening us. All our leaders have gone into hiding and switched off their mobile phones,” alleged Yadav.

Yadav said today again they conveyed to the government that if the government could not cancel the contract, at least they could suspend it for three months.

“We have proposed that government should give one subdivision to our employees for maintenance with all required staff and other equipment and another subdivision to the private contactor for three months. After the period, the government could assess the performance of both the subdivisions and if the contractor performs better, then we would not protest,” said Yadav.

About the government reply, he said that they had not received any response from government as yet.

“We would not disrupt power supply and in fact, keep surveillance because we suspect that some miscreants may try to disrupt power during our strike. We would rectify faults in emergency,” he said.

Nitin Yadav, Managing Director, Uttar Haryana Bijli Vitran Nigam, could not be contacted for his comments.