Nearly 15,000 Punjab power corporation employees start 3-day strike over pending demands

“Around 15 unions of PSPCL and PSTCL are participating in the strike, and a section of junior engineers and grid association employees have also joined us,” said Gurpreet Singh Gadiwind, Convenor, Bijli Ekta Manch.

Gurpreet Singh Mehdoodan, President, Ludhiana division, PSEB Employees Federation (AITUC), confirmed the joint participation.

The call for the strike was given on July 27.

On Sunday afternoon, a meeting between the employees, Punjab Finance Minister Harpal Singh Cheema, Power Minister Harbhajan Singh ETO, and the management of PSPCL was held.

Gadiwind said, “The meeting started at 3 pm and continued till 6 pm. We were told that new recruitments will also be done, and in the current financial year, it will be 1,100 employees. Many other demands were agreed upon, but afterwards, PSPCL management kept us waiting till midnight, and gave us a document that did not fully match the demands agreed upon in the meeting hours ago. So, we refused to take that document, and continued with our strike.”

The employees say their issues had been agreed to “in principle” by the Punjab Government in a meeting on June 2, attended by Power Minister Harbhajan Singh ETO, officials of PSPCL and PSTCL, but have yet to be implemented.

Sources said the latest meeting between the power minister and employee representatives on August 6 did not go well, with differences surfacing between the two sides. The decision to launch the three-day strike was taken soon after.

With the regular staff absent, engineers have been deputed at grid stations to manage operations. “On Sunday, we wrote to Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann, appealing to him to implement the genuine demands of employees, which the government has already agreed upon. In the absence of staff, PSEB engineers will be manning the grid stations during the strike,” said Ajaypal Singh Atwal, General Secretary, PSEB Engineers Association.

The engineers, however, have informed PSPCL management that they will not perform additional duties, limiting themselves to their regular eight-hour shifts. If a replacement fails to report within two hours after their shift ends, they will leave the grid station.

About 2,000 engineers, ranked sub-divisional officers and above, are currently manning the grid stations for these three days. Of the approximately 4,000 junior engineers, only a section is performing duties in their designated departments, without taking on extra work.

Ratan Singh Majari, convenor of PSEB employees federation, said, “The power minister had agreed to most of our demands in the June 2 meeting between the minister, power corporation officials and employees federation members, but failed to implement them.”

The absence of staff may slow fault repairs in case of outages, as around 5,500 contractual employees will be left to handle them. These workers, who had gone on strike in June during the Ludhiana West Assembly bypolls, have been assured regularisation and have stayed off the current protest, awaiting the government’s response.

The employees’ main demands include regularisation of services, implementation of Punjab pay scales instead of central pay scales (which have reduced wages since mid-2019), restoration of the old pension scheme, jobs on compassionate grounds for families of employees who die on duty, and other service-related issues.

Stories For You

Rajnath Singh’s swipe at Trump: Sabke Boss, doesn’t like India’s rise, can’t stop us

‘No choice’ but to ‘finish the job’: Netanyahu defends Israel’s plan to ‘take over’ Gaza

‘Vote chori’: Karnataka CEO asks Rahul Gandhi to submit proof for allegations related to Mahadevapura