Power Minister asks utilities to submit recommendations
Assures engineers of resolving pending issues
Manish Sirhindi/TNS

Panipat, August 7
Conceding one of the long-pending demands of the state power engineers regarding the restructuring of the discoms, state Power Minister Capt Ajay Singh Yadav has asked the utilities to submit the recommendations within 15 days so that the modalities to reorganise the discoms could be completed soon.

The minister issued the directions during talks with the representatives of the engineers of all four power utilities of the state on August 5.

The minister also assured the engineers that other demands raised by them would also be looked into and efforts would be made to find a suitable solution at the earliest.

The minister had invited the engineers for talks after they had threatened to launch a statewide stir against non-acceptance of their demands.

An 18-member delegation led by RS Dahiya and RK Jangra, presidents of the HSEB Power Engineers Association and the HPGCL Engineers Association, respectively, had put forth the demands, which included restructuring of the discoms, parity in pay scales of assistance engineers and state power engineers, retirement of directors of the power utilities after they attain the age of superannuation and filling of the vacant posts.

Dahiya said the pay anomalies of engineers working in the HPGCL and the HVPN had already been removed, but the issue was still pending in the other two utilities. He said the minister assured that pay parity would be introduced soon.

The HPGCL authorities told the minister that a consultant had been appointed to fill the vacant posts in the utility. However, the minister asked the HVPN officials to expedite the process.

The issue related to the appointment of directors in utilities was also taken up and the minister was requested to allow the serving engineer having at least one year pending of service to be appointed as director.

Jangra and Hardeep Sangwan urged the minister to revise the allowances of thermal engineers, which had not been done so for after the revision of pay scales. The minister asked the power utilities to look into the matter.

Dahiya said during the meeting it was decided to create a human resources cell in each utility to look after the manpower requirement.