CHENNAI: After a long delay, the Tamil Nadu Power Distribution Corporation Limited (TNPDCL) has released a draft revised order on workload to be handled, which will be applicable for nearly 50,000 Group 3 and Group 4 employees in the organisation. The discom has given a 15-day period for employees to submit their comments and objections, before finalising the draft.
According to official sources, the revision had been pending for the past two years, and TNPDCL has now decided to move forward in an attempt to improve field operations, strengthen monitoring and enhance consumer services.
A draft copy of the proposal accessed by TNIE shows that each section office will now have to cover 168 transformers, compared with 140 transformers in the workload norms issued on March 2, 2018. Similarly, workload for almost all categories of field-related tasks — including meter reading, bill collection, breakdown work and maintenance — have been increased by around 20% to 30%.
A Sekkizhar, general secretary of the TNEB Employees Federation (affiliated with UTUC), told TNIE that the staffing pattern has remained outdated for decades. “There are about 2,900 section offices functioning across the state. For more than 30 years, each section office has been operating with seven workmen groups, with each group having a wireman and a field assistant — a total of 14 staff. But today, most section offices have only six to eight employees, and the rest of the posts are lying vacant,” he said.
“Workload keeps increasing every year, but the discom has neither created new posts nor taken steps to fill the vacancies. This will directly affect lakhs of consumers,” he added.
Sekkizhar further pointed out that nearly 10,000 gangmen have been working for the past four years but are still not considered under the official workload structure. “We have repeatedly requested TNPDCL to promote gangmen as field assistants and include them in the workload,” he said.
Echoing similar concerns, E Natarajan, state general secretary of the Bharathiya Electricity Engineers Association, said the discom has introduced several new technical systems, but has not created any new technical posts.
With the new draft increasing the workload, attending to transformer repairs, feeder faults and power outages will take more time in the coming months, he said, and added, “There is no point in increasing workload without increasing staff strength.”