Members, including office-bearers, of the Baripada unit of NESCO Power Employees’ Union, under the leadership of the union's deputy general secretary Jyotikrushna Behera, have submitted an eleven-point charter of demands to the authorities here. If their demands are not met by June 15, they will take recourse to agitation from June 16, the union leaders have threatened.
The memorandum, addressed to the Tata Power North Odisha Distribution Limited Superintending Engineer Harish Chandra Panda, was handed over on Wednesday to Tata Power Human Resources Officer Bhavani Shankar Beura.
The demands include considering metre readers as skilled workers and paying wages to them accordingly, stopping of reshuffling/transfer of non-executive technical employees, not making the employees work beyond eight hours, discontinuing the practice of engaging employees in humiliating activities, giving promotion to eligible employees and not forcing linemen to perform unassigned work, etc.
Both permanent and temporary linemen have been feeling exploited ever since the Tata Power assumed the charge of electricity distribution, they alleged.
If the authorities continue to be indifferent to the employees' woes, they would go on strike from June 16, the leaders warned.
Chandan Kumar Mohanty, Devashish Behera, Jnana Ranjan Parida, Jyotilal Biswal, Dinesh Gupta, Sanjay Ghosh, Pramod Patra, Krushnapad Mohant, Naveen Dutt, Suman Nath, Pradeep Nath and Kedar Sihna were part of the memorandum-submitting delegation.
