VIJAYAWADA: Power supply was disrupted for a few hours in various parts of the city as the Andhra Pradesh Contract Electricity Employees Association called for an indefinite strike from Tuesday demanding that the State government regularise their services and equal pay for equal work.
Hundreds of contract employees from various districts gathered here and staged a protest at Dharna Chowk. Addressing the gathering at the protest camp, United Forum for Electricity Employees (UFEE) president Chandraiah came down heavily on the TDP for ignoring their long-pending demand of regularising the services of 24,000 contract employees in the electricity department. With the inordinate delay, several of the employees are facing severe hardships to meet their daily needs and hundreds of workers lost their lives while on duty, he said.
“Several representations are submitted to the higher officials in the department over the issue but it was of no use. An ultimatum was also served to the State government mentioning about the indefinite strike from February 20 if it failed to address our demands,” he added.
APTRANSCO Managing Director K Vijayanand held talks with the association leaders late on Monday night. However, the talks didn’t yield any result so the contract employees launched an indefinite strike. Once again, the higher officials invited the employees to participate in the second round of talks on Tuesday evening. Sensing the trouble, the police deployed additional forces near Dharna Chowk to foil the indefinite strike of the employees at any moment.
Tension prevailed for a while near NTTPS Ibrahimpatnam on Tuesday morning when electricity employees also extended their solidarity to the strike. With this, the higher officials in the NTTPS are forcing the contract employees in the unit to work extra hours to avoid interruption for power supply in the city and its suburbs.A contract employee got fainted and was rushed to a nearby hospital for treatment. He was recovering well.
Main demands
There are 24,000 contract electricity employees in the State. Their demands include regularisation of their services, equal pay for equal work, job security and R20 lakh compensation in case of accidental death, along with permanent employment to one person from the family.