Power Engineers seeks Haryana CM intervention
Vinod Kumar Gupta
Wednesday, 06 July 2011
CHANDIGARH: Haryana Power Engineers have requested Chief Minister Haryana to intervene so that their long pending genuine demands such as removal of pay anomalies and restructuring of power utilities are resolved.

R.S.Dahiya, President of the Haryana Power Engineers Association in a letter to state Government and power utilities managements mentioned that in case their genuine demands are not met in time bound frame engineers would be forced to adopt agitation path after August 15.

The biggest irritant is the anomaly in pay scales of assistant engineers who have been given pay scales of junior engineers. Previously power engineers were getting higher pay as compared to their counter parts in state Government but now they are getting much lower as compared to their counterparts in state which cannot be justified by any one.
Even more surprising is the fact that one power utility HPGCL has already removed some anomalies but others are adopting delaying tactics.

Hardeep Sangwan General Secretary of HPGCL Engineers Association said that Haryana State Electricity Board was bifurcated into four power utilities in 1998-99 with the condition that they will be restructured after five years. Government has failed to restructure them despite the fact that there has been increase in number of connections, increase in number of sub-stations, increase of distribution and transmission lines and increase in power generation. Even the norms fixed by Regulatory Commission are not adhered to.

There is a need to strengthen the man power for the better consumer services. Dahiya said that the posts of Engineer – in –Chief in all the power utilities have been held in abeyance whereas all three wings of PWD in Haryana have post of Engineer-in-Chief . The Association demands that these posts should be revived and immediately filled up.

The Directors in power utilities continue to serve the utility after their retirements and all such persons should be retired at the age of superannuation so that chance of promotion is given to other senior engineers as well.