Excelsior Correspondent
JAMMU, Oct 16: The employees of Power Development Department (PDD) continued their strike and held protest demonstration in all the districts of Jammu and Kashmir against the unilateral move of the Government to operationalise the unbundling of the department.
On the call of PEECC, the employees voluntarily joined the pen down, tool down call expressing resentment on the move of the Government to split the Government department into companies. The ‘pen down’ along with ‘tool down’ affected the planned electrification works along with bill generation, distribution, redressal of consumer grievances in the revenue centers along with the hampering of the information transmission to higher authorities.
The IT Centres of PDD along with the work in the Divisional Offices also remained affected as employees refused to entertain the consumer grievances pertaining to the bills and abstained from any official work in offices. However, in order to avoid inconvenience to consumers, the rapid action teams for fault resolutions/maintain of supply were allowed to continue their assignments.
Later, the members led by Jaipal Sharma, chairman PEECC and other senior trade unionists including Ajaz Kazmi, Sanjeev Bali, Kulbir Singh, Balbir Singh, Anil Slathia, Manjeet Singh, Tarun Gupta, Pawan Ganotra and HD Singh addressed the employees and shared the concerns that arise out of the proposed move of the Government.
The PEECC resolved that its pen down and with tools down strike shall continue till Thursday and on Thursday all employees shall assemble at PDD office Panama Chowk from where a big rally shall proceed from Panama Chowk PDD office to Divisioanl Commissioner office Jammu and similarly in Kashmir to Divisional Commissioner office Kashmir where after deliberations by the committee members with the Divisional Commissioner further course of action shall be decided as the Government has failed to re- constitute the committee and take all stakeholders into confidence before putting things to implementation.
They appealed the J&K Governor, Satya Pal Malik to retain Power Development Department as a Government department and allow this large sector employment to grow further.
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