All India Power Engineers Federation (AIPEF) representatives on Friday opposed privatisation of banks and the power sector and extended support to bank employees for their two days strike on March 15 and 16.
VK Gupta spokesperson of AIPEF said that there is no evidence that the government’s stated policy is to hand over public assets to the private sector would bring a greater degree of efficiency and financial gains to the public.
Shailendra Dubey AIPEF chairman in his letter to the Prime Minister has requested him to withdraw the decision of privatization of nationalised banks.
The letter mentions, “The track record of the private players in the power sector is a story of mismanagement resulting in huge losses for the banks. As per official records, bad loans of the energy sector spurted many times in the last few years. As many as 34 financially stressed power projects, with a capacity of 40 GW and with bank exposure of over Rs 1.8 lakh crore, are reportedly headed to the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) for resolution under the bankruptcy code.”
AIPEF representatives added that the engineers and employees of the power sector have a common cause with the bank employees since the government has decided to privatise the distribution companies and hand them over to the same agencies that have bled both the power and banking sectors.
“Every year state Discoms pay private power suppliers thousands of crores even though they have not drawn even a single unit of power due to wrong Power Purchase Agreements (PPA) signed by the Government. Gujarat has to pay Rs 15 per unit for solar energy even though currently, solar power is available at Rs 2.4 per unit due to its failure to revise power purchase agreements. The solution lies in revising the PPAs and not in privatising the Discoms”, said VK Gupta.