Electricity employees and engineers all over the country will demonstrate tomorrow
on 1st February 2022 in solidarity with their counterparts in Chandigarh and Puducherry, who have decided to go on strike against the privatization of power union territories.

V K Gupta spokesperson of All India Power Engineers Federation (AIPEF) said that power sector employees vehemently oppose selective privatization with commercially lucrative revenue potential area of distribution utilities decried as the process of cherry-picking, known as the policy of privatization of profits and nationalizing the losses.

UT Chandigarh power employees union have given a two days strike call on February 1 and 7, while Puducherry power employees have given indefinite strike call from February 1 .In Puducherry political parties DMK and Congress are supporting the strike call of the employees.

Even Chandigarh has been given favorable energy allocation from BBMB as well as allocations from central sector generating stations ensuring low-cost comfortable energy security In the cases of UT Chandigarh its technical, financial ,and commercial parameters like exemplary level of distribution, loss is 9.2% and revenue surplus for the last three years concurrent, yet the government is bent upon the privatizing its electricity department.

It may be mentioned that even the NITI Ayog document titled “Turning Around the power distribution sector, learning and best practices of Reforms” mentions that globally, 70 percent of the distribution utilities are publicly owned and the remaining 30 percent of the privately-owned companies are located in middle and high-income countries.

V K Gupta said that India is neither a high nor middle-income country. It is a country of low- income population. Puducherry has unanimously decided to resort to an indefinite strike from 1st February 2022.

The provision of section 133 of the Electricity Act 2003 has not been taken into account The transfer scheme as proposed for UT Chandigarh, the employees will be shifted from service under UT Govt. Department to service under the private company.