Madhya Pradesh United Forum for Power Employees and Engineers (MPUFPEE) has given a call to all state-owned power companies’ employees to boycott work starting November 1. The boycott, which is dubbed as “karya bahishkar andolan”, aims to press the authorities to agree to their five-point demands. The strike is indefinite in nature and will continue until the demands of the power employees are not addressed.
The boycott would see officials maintaining an absence from the workplace, starting at 8 a.m. on November 1. The operators of all the state power companies have also been instructed to not work on emergency situations, like fault repair and maintenance work as well.
The forum consists of 11 associations of engineers and employees of state-owned power companies.
The coordinator of the forum, VKS Parihar, told PTI that the demands include payment of 50 per cent of the arrears of dearness allowance and deferred increment amount in the salary from October. Other demands of the forum include benefit of salary hike, dearness allowance to contractual engineers and employees and payment of bonus and salary to employees engaged on outsourcing basis before Diwali.
They had put forth their demands in a series of meetings with the state energy minister and principal secretary of the Energy Department earlier. Parihar said that although assurances of needful action to fulfil the demands were given during the meetings, no move has actually been taken by the state to address the issues.
