Engineers hold protest rallies
Tribune News Service

Patiala, November 17
In response to the call of the PSEB Engineers' Association, engineers all over the state walked out of their offices and held "protest rallies" at Zonal headquarters. At Patiala, over 300 engineers of the head office and South Zone assembled in front of the PSPCL headquarters to lodge their protest at the dilly-dallying by the management in implementing the decisions and assurances given to the Association in the meeting held under the chairmanship of the Chief Minister, Punjab, on October 22.

The president of the association, HS Bedi said: “Although the state government had fulfilled its promises by giving a written approval to the proposal to set up a thermal plant under the state sector and also allowed recruitment of over 450 engineers in power companies but the PSPCL management has not fulfilled even a single promise till date. It was promised by CMD/PSPCL that General Provident Fund trust shall be operationalised by putting in an initial amount of Rs 250 crore in the fund by October 28 but no amount has been credited to the fund.”

The general secretary of the Association, Bhupinder Singh informed that the PSEB (now PSPCL) had used over Rs 1,800 crore of the Employees Provident Fund for various capital works and there is zero balance in the GPF account which is against the company law. Promotional scales were promised to be notified by October 31 but no orders have been issued till date.

The engineers are agitated at the decision of the PSPCL management to give a meagre hike of "Generation Incentive" to employees and engineers, ignoring the recommendations of the committee constituted by PSPCL for this purpose. Engineers resolved that in case issues are not resolved, engineers will stage a "state-level dharna" at Patiala on November 22 and will also proceed on a one-day mass casual leave on November 30. The Association appealed to the Chief Minister, Punjab, to intervene.