Srinagar, Mar 22: The Jammu and Kashmir Electrical Engineering Graduates Association (JKEEGA) has unanimously passed the decision that suspension orders of engineers shall be revoked within 7 days failing which all the power engineers across J&K shall go on one day protest leave.
JKEEGA held an emergency Guidance Council meeting on 21 March under the chairmanship of Er Sachin Tickoo, President JKEEGA and Er Pirzada Hidayatullah, General Secretary JKEEGA and denounced the action of government in strong terms wherein engineers have been cherry picked and suspended for no fault of theirs without assessing replies furnished by engineers, who were served show cause notices.
The replies as per standing norms should have been assessed by a technical committee so that sense would have prevailed and no decision like suspensions in haste would have been taken, JKEEGA said.
Reminding the Government about reality, it was briefed that vast expansion of power network and assets required strengthening the power corporations by way of recruitment at lower level and not suspensions and same is seen as a setback to the morale of field engineers who have worked hard during tough times of strikes, COVID-19 and harsh winters.
Further it was briefed that existing engineers due to scarcity of staff on account of non recruitment are burdened with huge work loads and instead of praising them for maintaining the ailing networks they have been made scapegoats. The members in unequivocal terms pressed upon the fact that “we are with Govt for loss reduction but loss reduction of huge magnitude cannot be curbed overnight and same requires huge infrastructure changes including cabling at LT level as only smart meter installation cannot curb the power pilferage.”