The All India Power Engineers Federation (AIPEF) Saturday put its weight behind the Jammu and Kashmir Electrical Engineering Graduates Association (JKEEGA) which has decided to go on a mass leave on September 9 over a series of demands. In a statement, the spokesperson of the central power engineers body, V K Gupta, said, “The AIPEF demands that the administration should resolve the genuine issues of the J&K employees and engineers.” Gupta added, “The Jammu and Kashmir administration has been absolutely non-serious about the issues being faced by the power employees and engineers. The recruitment has been put on hold for the last seven years and the transmission corporation is headless from almost a year now.” Gupta further said, “A meeting of the apex body of the Guidance Council under the chairmanship of Sachin Tickoo, president of JKEEGA, and Peerzada Hidayatullah, the body’s general secretary, was held at Jammu and Srinagar. The meeting had deliberated on the inordinate delay in filling up the vacant positions which in turn is denting the morale of the engineering fraternity.” He added, “Tickoo said currently there are two posts of Managing Director, three posts of Executive Director, five Chief Engineers, 14 Superintending Engineers, 61 Executive Engineers, 132 Assistant Ex- Engineers, 164 Assistant Engineers and around 350 Junior Engineers lying vacant, leading to a situation where every other person is having minimum two or three charges. This clearly affects the quality of work.” According to Gupta, Hidayatullah said that they have been continuously following the resolution of HR issues and time and again were assured of the resolution of all issues but to no avail. “The significant issues of regularisation, timely promotions against vacant posts and recruitment at the Junior Engineer level have been lingering for quite a long time now. The fact is that the engineers presently working in different power corporations have not been granted a single regular promotion,” Hidayatullah reportedly claimed.
