Punjab Government has approved the setting up of 4000 megawatt Super Critical Thermal Plant at Ropar with five units of 800 MW generation capacity each, along with the 60 MW Biomass Plant and a 100 MW Solar Plant.
“This would ally the fear of Punjab State Power Corporation Limited (PSPCL) employees regarding dominance of private players in the power sector due to closure of 880 MW thermal units in Bathinda and Ropar,” said the state Power Minister Gurpreet Singh Kangar on Friday.
“The closure of existing units, by no means, amount to dominance of private sector... It is just a switchover from the existing technology to the cheaper, greener, state-of -art technology,” the Minister said.
Giving a patient hearing to the delegations of Joint Employees Forum and Bilji Mulazam Ekta Manch, Kangar assured that a joint committee of representatives of PSPCL, PSTCL and Employees Associations would be formed to re-examine the existing Power Purchase Agreements (PPA).
He also promised favourable solution to the 23-year promotional scale and the pay band issues and advised the PSPCL chairman-cum-managing director Baldev Singh Sran to look into the issue in the forthcoming meeting of the Board of Directors (BoD).
He informed that over 600 employees of various cadres have been promoted and about 400 others will be promoted soon.
Terming the death of short term contractual employees working on live wires as unfortunate, Power Minister directed the CMD to review the compensation criterion for such cases and workout a reasonable reimbursement or job option for the dependants of such employees.