Outsourcing firm to sack workers booked for manhandling Ludhiana PSPCL officials

An outsourcing firm of Punjab State Power Corporation Limited (PSPCL) has decided to sack its seven workers, who were among those booked for allegedly misbehaving with powercom officials and manhandling them.

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Gurpreet Singh, the manager of Sandhu and Company, told The Tribune about 70-80 employees working on contract basis were sitting on a dharna against the PSPCL for the past many days. They were engaged by two outsourcing firms.

On January 24, officials led by the Chief Engineer were holding a meeting when they heard some noise outside. As they went out, few contractual employees allegedly started misbehaving with them. The officials were manhandled too.

“The FIR is lodged against seven persons hired by our company. We have decided to terminate their services as such a behaviour is intolerable. We cannot allow anybody to take law in their hands,” said Gurpreet Singh.

A case was registered against 14 persons by name and one unidentified person at the Division No. 5 police station following the incident in which the car of the Chief Engineer was gheraoed by contractual employees sitting on a dharna at the office opposite the Punjab Agricultural University. The officials had to call the police to get out of the situation.

Those booked were Simranjit Singh, Daljit Singh, Deepak, Sahil Sharma, Lekhraj, Harpreet Singh, Mohit, Manpreet, Raghvir, Jaspal, Ajay, Paramjit Kaur, Bhupinder Kaur, Pritpal Kaur and an unknown.

An employee, whose name was also mentioned in the FIR, claimed that he did not misbehave with anyone and was only there with the protesters. “We were simply lodging a protest as our long-pending demands were not met and the authorities were not giving us a patient hearing,” he said.