Anomalies in wage panel report
PSEB employees hold protest
Tribune News Service

Ludhiana, November 6
A large number of employees of the PSEB Employees Federation (AITUC), Punjab, and Technical Service Union (TSU) staged a protest against the “anomalies” in the report submitted by wage formulation committee of the electricity board today.

The board employees raised slogans against the PSEB, criticising the higher officials for having curtailed all financial benefits of lower-rank staff.

Federation spokesperson Roshan Lal said the matter had already been taken up at zonal conventions across the state and now the unions would stage statewide protests against the board’s policies.

The federation and union leaders condemned the attitude of the officials in the wage formulation committee of the PSEB adding that the rate of increment had gone down with people on the higher ranks, especially bureaucrats, benefiting the most from the presentation made in the report.

The employees who were earlier getting two increments on time-bound promotion scale in nine years would now get only one increment, which was unjust, said the leaders.

They also said under the five bands, in which the PSEB employees had been divided, top rank officials benefitted the most with employees falling in the lowest band being altogether ignored in terms of financial gains.

Raising voice against the Electricity Bill 2003, the federation and union workers demanded a complete rollback of the proposed Bill.

Balraj Kumar, Jagir Singh, Nirmal Singh, Ghulab Singh, Kewal Singh Banwait and other union leaders opined that the Bill would prove as a death knell for the marginal farmers, labourers, small industrial units and people at large.