Excelsior Correspondent
JAMMU, July 17: Seeking intervention of Lieutenant Governor, power employees and engineers will hold protest the privitisation move tomorrow.
The decision was taken in a meeting held here under the banner of PECC and attended by various Unions of PDD led by Er Sachin, Convenor PECC, Er Jaipal Sharma, Ajaz Kazmi and Sanjeev Bali of PPEU, Balbir Singh of Draftsman Association, Anil Slathia of Lineman and Workers Association, HD Singh of TEF, Parshottam Kumar of CNGEU, Jasbir Singh of ITI Employees, Tarun Gupta of PEU and Akhil Sharma of Need Based Union, Gurmeet Singh, CNGEA. Their counterparts in Kashmir attended the meeting through video conferencing.
The members deliberated upon the recent developments wherein the Union Government has unilaterally gone ahead with holding meetings with JKUT Administration on the privatisation issue in a bid to push the power distribution sector to private hands.
The PECC strongly opposed the approach of Government ventilated through the proposed “draconian anti-people electricity privatisation with clear objective of snatching away right of access to electricity from poor section of Indian people and peasants”.
The Power Development Department has been corporatized post August 5, and within less than six months, the privatisation is being talked about. The unilateral approach of the UOI towards the power sector of Jammu and Kashmir lacks consistency and appears to keep the employees and public in atmosphere of uncertainty, the participants of the meeting observed.
The corporations have been operationalised from 23-10-2019 on existing staffing strength without taking any measures to implement the recommendations of the committee constituted for carving out corporations, thereby rendering the corporations ineffective, they added.
PECC amidst COVID-19 through medium of emails and social media has sent memorandum to Lieutenant Governor, Ministry of Home affairs, but no talks have been held with the employees on the issue of privatisation till date, the participants said.
They informed that the employees across JK UT had observed protest day on 1st June 2020 on this issue. Since the Government seems to ignore the sentiments and arguments of the employees and walks unilaterally, so it has now become imperative to protest much more strongly amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, they added.
PPEU has appealed to the employees of PDD across Jammu and Kashmir to observe peaceful protest tomorrow at their respective divisions opposing the privatization move of the Government.
Follow our WhatsApp channel