Maharashtra power engineers on 8 days strike against the franchisee system
09-Feb-2010 Vinod Kumar Gupta
Maharashtra power engineers on 8 days strike against the franchisee system

Thane: The Subordinate Engineers Association (SEB) in Maharashtra has served a strike notice to the management of all three companies of erstwhile MSEB against corporate office decision to hand over the distribution of power in major cities to private franchisee.

All the engineers would be joining one day strike on February 23 to protest against the power companies’ decision to introduce franchisee system in power sector. They will be wearing black badges from February 16 to 23.

It may be mentioned that the corporate office has taken a decision to hand over the distribution of power in Jalgaon, Aurangabad and Nagpur areas to franchisee. The notice mentions that the decision to handover the areas of Ulhasnagar, Ahmednagar and Dhule to franchisee are in pipeline.

Subhash Rathore General Secretary of Association said that by their consistent efforts the line losses has been reduced from 29.6 percent in 2006-07 to 21.98 percent in 2008-09.The collection efficiency has increased from 94.7 percent to 96.61 percent during the same period and now repatriation is on verge of completion of Rs. 2500 crores.

He alleged that not withstanding the excellent performance the corporate office is taking illogical and bitter decisions which are not conducive for good health of the companies. The power companies are privatizing the power sector with keeping only the assets with the company.

Rathore said that in addition to protest against franchisee system they are also protesting against the handing over small hydro power houses to private parties and power companies’ failure to remove the pay anomalies in their pay scales.