Engineers of Cesu, Southco, Nesco, Wesco, OPTCL, Gridco, OHPC and OPGC under the b anner of the All Odisha Power Engineers’ Federation on Saturday launched their protest wearing black badges against the inordinate delay in payment of house rent and medicine allowance in the revised scale to them.
They said that even though the non-executives of the power sector have been paid house rent and medicine allowance in the revised scale since June 2018, the
executives are deprived of the benefits. Even, the pay revision arrear has not yet been paid in the Discoms, they added.
Mentioning that a meeting held with the Energy Minister on June 4, 2018 and his instructions on August 16,
2018 have not yielded any result, the federation has decided that the engineers would also submit their grievances to the Chief Minister's grievance cell.
The engineers have also decided to hold candlelight protest in front of all power offices from January 24 and 25, relay dharna at Bhubaneswar from February 4 to 7 and march to the Assembly during its coming session.
The engineers have also expressed concerned about the move to privatise the
power distribution sector once again though the earlier privatisation miserably failed to achieve its objectives and provide better service to consumers.