PUDUCHERRY: Employees of the Puducherry electricity department, including engineers, began an indefinite strike on Wednesday against the UT government after it floated a tender to privatise power distribution.
More than 20,000 workers struck work across the UT on Wednesday. “We have decided not to attend to any failure or outage, bill collection, meter reading or maintenance work,” said Velmurugan, head of the ‘electricity engineers and employees privatisation protest committee’ formed to carry forward the strike.
Our main demands include withdrawal of privatisation move and securing our status as government employees till retirement and benefits thereafter as per service rules, Velmurugan said. Though the Union government had decided to privatise the power sector, the ball was set rolling in Puducherry when a draft transfer scheme specifying service conditions was presented to employees. However, the employees refused to accept it.