Minister invites power engineers for talks
Manish Sirhindi
Tribune News Service

Panipat, July 28
After being served with a 45-day ultimatum by the state power engineers, the Minister for Power has finally invited the engineers for talks to discuss various issues raised by them.

In a communique sent to the HSEB Workers’ Union and the Haryana Power Engineers Association (HPEA), the minister has invited their representatives to hold talks on August 4.

The issues, including restructuring of the discoms, pay anomalies, retirement of directors who attain the age of superannuation and filling of vacant posts will be discussed at the meeting.

The power engineers had been repeatedly seeking redressal of their pending demands. The restructuring of the discoms has been due for the last 12 years and despite strong pleas put up by the engineers the state government has been some what reluctant in re-organising the distribution companies.

The engineers had also been demanding parity in the pay scales of the Assistant Engineers (AEs) working in discoms and that of the state engineers. Though, the Haryana Power Generation Corporation Limited (HPGCL) has granted a pay scale of Rs 14,880 to the AEs, but the other three utilities have so far denied the same scale to their engineers.

RS Dahiya, president of the HPEA, said they were quite hopeful that the talks with the minister would yield some positive results.