All India Power Engineers Federation (AIPEF) wants to bring your kind notice following more points against privatisation of the Power Department of UT’s.
2. In the second meeting of high level Committee held on 17/9/2020 the two major decisions taken were...
“(v) It was decided that MOP / concerned UT will convene meetings with the stakeholders to resolve the UT specific issues separately.
(vi) The representative from MHA emphasized the criticality of safeguarding the interest of the employees in the privatization process”.
3. From the practical and actual sequence of events it is seen that both these major decisions taken by the high level steering committee on 17/09/2020 have not been implemented at all.
a) In the case of UT Chandigarh there has been no meeting between the employee representatives and UT Administration or with Power Ministry GOI regarding the UT specific issues or regarding the service, pay, pension issues of the employees. In the case of Puducherry again there was no progress in the implementation of the two above stated decisions. In fact a delegation of UT Pondicherry employees accompanied the chief minister Puducherry to meet the Power Minister GOI in a delegation on 21/01/2021. However, the Union Power Minister flatly refused to meet any of the employees representatives despite the fact that they have travelled from Puducherry to Delhi, along with the Chief Minister specifically to meet the Union Power Minister.
4. It is seen that decisions are being taken by the Govt. of India / Power Ministry and being grossly violated even before the privatization process is completed. Under such circumstances there is no certainty or guarantee that any of the assurances by Govt or decisions taken during the privatization process would be honored at any subsequent stage.
5. The incident of the Union Power Minister refusing to meet the Puducherry employees even though such decisions had been taken in September 2020 in the high level committee establishes that the entire process has been vitiated by the govt. itself and cannot be relied upon by the employees particularly in the matter of pay and service conditions.
Section 133 of the electricity Act specifies as under
“Provided that such terms and conditions on the transfer shall not in any way be less favorable than those which would have been applicable to them if there had been no such transfer under the transfer scheme”.
It is stated that when an employee is shifted from service in a government organization to a private organization / company the security of service including pay, pension under private regime can never be equated to the conditions under government service. Hence, under section 133 of Electricity Act 2003 the shifting of any employee from Government service to private company is a clear cut violation of Electricity Act 2003. Therefore , under section 133 the privatization is not permissible.
6. The above instances are being pointed out since these are in violation of recorded decisions for the MOP as well as the Electricity Act 2003. The fact that representative of Home Ministry GOI has stated that
The representative from MHA emphasized the criticality of safeguarding the interest of the employees in the privatization process
Is by itself a clear admission that the safeguards specified in Sec 133 of Electricity Act 2003 are not adequate to protect employees in the privatisation process. Further even though the Home Ministry had stressed the criticality of the issue, the Power minister Sh R K Singh refused to meet Puducherry employees. This gives the clear impression that GOI is acting only to favour selected corporates while giving no priority to employee concerns.
7. AIPEF again demands that since GOI has violated its own decisions of the High Level Committee , GOI must scrap the entire process of privatization of Power in Union Territories and related issues of Standard Bidding Documents.
With Thanks.
Sincerely Yours
Shailendra Dubey
Chairman