PSEB Engineers’ Association in its letter to Chief Minister, Punjab has expressed its serious concern on the manner in which the power sector is being managed by the Board and the State Government.

While criticizing the recent practice of the Board to seek prior permission of CM’s office before issuing transfer, posting or promotion orders of engineers, Association referred to the meeting held with the Chief Minister Punjab on 6-11-2008 wherein it was assured that matter would be sorted out to ensure timely promotion of engineers. However despite repeated assurances from the management, promotion orders of Assistant Executive Engineers and Senior Executive Engineers have not been affected for the last 6 months causing lot of resentment and demoralization amongst the engineers.
At a time when the people of the state are reeling under severe power cuts and Board is on the verge of financial collapse, the time being devoted to petty issue like posting and transfer of few officers by the Board management or the State Government is not justified. The Board management is even finding at difficult to pay timely salary to its employees and lot of development works have been shelved due to shortage of funds. The release of domestic connections in many circles of the Board is pending for more than 16 months due to non availability of material. In the present scenario, the focus of the management and the State government should have been on finding ways and means to tackle serious maladies affecting the power sector rather than wasting precious time and energy on posting and transfers. Taking over day to day functions of the Board management is virtually a “No Confidence” of the State Government on the capabilities and effectiveness of the present management. In such a scenario it would be prudent to bring more responsive and effective management team rather than taking over its functions.
Further, during the meeting, Association also raised the issue of reemployment of superannuated officers and it was assured that matter would be looked into and needful would done but instead of dispensing with the service of superannuated engineers, Board extended the term of some of these engineers.
Association requested the Chief Minister, Punjab to intervene and resolve these issues which are agitating the engineers. An emergency meeting of the office bearers of the Association has been convened on Wednesday to finalise the future course of action.
-Sd-
(Er. Bhupinder Singh)
General Secretary