All India Power Engineers Federation (AIPEF) has demanded that the power sector be kept in the public sector in the interest of common consumers and farmers.
In support of its demand, the AIPEF will place its proposals before the Central government and the state governments.
The AIPEF said all its state units expressed their resolve to make the campaign of cheap electricity for all a success and it was said that the work of providing electricity to the remote rural areas at loss was being done successfully by the public sector. It said only the public sector companies could do this and were doing it successfully.
AIPEF chairman Shailendra Dubey said that the federation was formed 50 years ago on August 16, 1973, with the aim to bring power engineers of all the provinces of the country closer and unite them.
He said that today, the public sector power engineers were contributing to providing electricity to every village of the country.
He said that the target of providing electricity to every household could also be achieved in the public sector only because the public sector has been successfully executing national programmes regardless of losses.
He also said that the time had come when the experiment of unbundling the electricity boards and forming separate corporations 25 years ago should be revisited. “Instead of improving it, the deficit has increased,” he said¸and added, “Therefore, it is the need of the hour that all the power corporations should be integrated into one corporation so that better coordination can be maintained between power generation, transmission and distribution and the power system can be strengthened.”