A requisition has been sent to the Haryana Staff Selection Commission for filling up of 5000 posts for managing sub-stations of the Power Utilities in the State.

Additional Chief Secretary, Power, Rajan Gupta said, “In the last two years, more than 200 sub-stations have been augmented or commissioned. An investment of nearly Rs10,000 crores has been planned in the next three years. Engaging service providers in 23 sub-divisions is one of the steps in the direction of greater consumer satisfaction.

Gupta said that the cost of  power generation has not been increased during 2015-16. A petition has already been filed with the Regulator to reduce the Fuel Surcharge Adjustment by 25 paise. He added that the power tariff is likely to be reduced by year end.

Power engineers in Haryana wear black badges

While the employees of Power Corporation of Haryana went on 48 hours strike, the power engineers across the state on Wednesday wore black badges against the move to privatise the maintenance works at 23 sub divisions and non acceptance of their long pending demand.

KD Bansal, president of the Haryana Power Engineers Association Association said that the power engineers are opposed to the move to handover the maintenance of transmission lines to private sector instead of recruiting requisite staff to the maintenance work. The privatisation is definitely against the interests of States. The engineers will also wear black badges for second day, he said,

Bansal said that the Association had been pursuing for the demands of engineers for the last three years but Nigam managements are not accepting their long pending demands despite verbal assurances a number of times. The main demands are restructuring of Discoms, removing the pay anomalies of assistant engineers and against giving extensions to retiring Director, he added.

Opposition slams State Government

The opposition parties on Wednesday slammed Haryana Government on the issue of privatisation in the power sector.

Both INlD and Congress blamed the BJP led State Government for failing to fulfil the demands of Government employees and said that the ruling party should not have enforced ESMA in the State.

leader of opposition and INlD’s senior leader Abhay Singh Chautala said that ESMA was enforced in the state to threaten the Government employees not to proceed on strike. Instead of holding talks with the employees, the State Government is resorting to such tactics to resolve issues of the employees, said he.

Criticising the BJP led State Government, former Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda said that the BJP Government has entirely failed to resolve the issues of employees forcing them to go on strike.

On the other hand, Kiran Choudhry, leader of the Haryana Congress legislature Party said, “Before holding talks with the power sector employees, the State Government imposed the draconian anti-worker measure “ESMA”. This was an assault on the constitutional and democratic right of the workers to protest to press their demands.”