Almost four years after signing the tripartite agreement to safeguard the interests of the employees of erstwhile Punjab State Electricity Board (PSEB) — in view of its restructuring into two entities — the Punjab Government has finally agreed to honour the same in letter and spirit and resolve long pending issues of power engineers.
The assurance was given by the Deputy Chief Minister Sukhbir Badal, who also holds the power portfolio, after his meeting with a delegation of PSEB Engineers’ Association led by its president Baldev Singh. All issues relating to power sector and engineers and their long pending demands were discussed and deliberated upon in detail.
The tripartite agreement was signed amongst the State Government, the management of Punjab State Power Corporation limited (PSPCl) and the Punjab State Transmission Corporation limited (PSTCl) and associations of PSPCl and PSTCl on November 19, 2010.
The Association has been assured that besides implementing the tripartite agreement, any change in its clauses will also be carried out only after getting Association’s views and due discussions.
It was also agreed in principle that tenure of PSPCl and PSTCl chairman-cum-managing director or director will be fixed without any further extension. The association was recently up in arms against the State Government and had staged protests against its decision to grants one-year extension to the PSPCl CMD KD Chaudhri.
Further, it was decided in the meeting to start the process of selection for the posts of PSPCl directors — generation, human resources, finance, commercial, and distribution — within 15 days.
Association has also been assured that issues of common recruitment or cadre in PSPCl and PSTCl and legitimate start of pay scale to newly recruited Assistant Engineers (SDOs) will be sorted out shortly to the satisfaction of engineers.
Association chief informed Sukhbir regarding “biased, partisan and discriminatory attitude of PSPCl management towards engineers”. Acting swift, power secretary and PSPCl CMD were directed to hold immediate meeting with the Association for resolution of issues related to PSPCl raised by engineers.
PCPCl management was also directed to adopt distribution reforms as suggested by the Association. Deputy Chief Minister agreed that State’s share in generation capacity requires urgent enhancement and assured that Government would take urgent steps in this regard and a 4,000 MW plant will be brought up in State sector.
Sukhbir issued instructions to PSPCl for rationalization of work load as per norms and agreed that posts of SE Distributions are required at district headquarters.