Power staff boycott work, plan to intensify protest
The employees agitated against UP cabinet’s decision to hand over electricity distribution of five cities to private franchisees
LUCKNOW: The state’s power employees boycotted work for the whole day on Tuesday in response to a call by the Vidyut Karmchari Sanyukt Sangharsh Samiti against the UP cabinet’s decision to hand over electricity distribution of five cities to private franchisees. Lucknow, Varanasi, Gorakhpur, Meerut and Moradabad are the five cities.
They also announced their decision to intensify their stir and begin a work-to-rule agitation from March 28 and proceed on 72 hours’ statewide work boycott on April 9. The protest meetings will continue in the meantime, they said.
In Lucknow, they held a huge protest meeting at the Shakti Bhawan at noon even as UPPCL’s office wore a deserted look. UP Rajya Vidyut Upbhokta Parishad president Awadhesh Kumar Verma also joined the protest meeting with a several traders in solidarity. They shouted slogans against the government, accusing it of trying to benefit private companies in name of privatization.
“We again urge the government to reconsider its decision to avoid a clash,” Sangharsh Samiti leader Shailendra Dubey said. He warned the UPPCL management and the government of dire consequences if any of the employees was harassed or arrested during the ‘peaceful’ protests.
Uttar Pradesh Rajya Vidyut Parishad Junior Engineers’ Sangathan president RK Trivedi said, “All the hard work done by power corporation employees would be enjoyed by the private companies. The decision will hit the common man and employees of power corporation. The experience of Torrent in Agra is bad.”
Protests were also witnessed outside the gates of the Pipri, Panki, Obra, Aanpara, Harduaganj and Parischa power plants and power department offices at Mirzapur, Faizabad, Ghaziabad, Noida, Meerut, Saharanpur, Jhansi, Banda, Allahabad, Agra, Kanpur, Aligarh, Bareily and Moradabad.
“There has been no recruitment for the last one year and despite the constraints. we have worked hard to ensure hasslefree electricity supply,” a spokesman for a power employee’s union said.
He said be it revenue collection or plugging in line losses, the government power officials and employees had been working very hard to improve the situation.
“Despite this, if the state government wants to privatize these two sections, we will not let this happen,” he said.