Lukewarm response of managements to our long-pending demands, say union leaders

The Telangana Electricity Trade Unions Front (TETUF), a forum of 21 employees’ unions of power utilities, has indicated that it would resort to lightning strike anytime after October 23 as the response of the utilities’ managements to their long-pending demands was lukewarm and non-affirmative, even as the State government is struggling to deal with the RTC strike.

This was announced by TETUF chairman N. Padma Reddy and convenor E. Sridhar after their second round of talks with the power utilities’ managements failed to break any ice on Tuesday. They stated that the representatives of the managements, Joint Managing Director of TSTransco C. Srinivasa Rao and a few other directors of other power utilities, had expressed difficulties including legal problems to implement APSEB rules to the artisans.

The TETUF leader further said the managements had offered to implement basic pay structure to the artisans as per the standing orders, variable dearness allowance instead of dearness allowance and employment on compassionate grounds to an eligible kin of the artisans who died while working. On other issues, they suggested to continue talks and cooperation of the front.

The representatives of managements had proposed to convene a meeting with Energy Minister and the Chief Minister on the issues such as implementation of GPF instead of EPF. However, the TETUF functionaries including co-chairman M.A. Vazeer, co-convenors S. Sridhar Gound, K. Kurumachary, G. Saibabu, M.A. Majeed, G. Nagaraju, D. Radhakrishna and S. Sailu felt that they were not convinced by the response of the managements’ representatives.

Since their demands including introducing GPF system instead of EPF for all employees who had joined power utilities after February 1, 1999 and others were agreed by the managements they had decided to launch lightning strike any time after October. Besides, their protest in support of RTC employees’ strike would be held at the Mint Compound on Wednesday.

Different voice

Meanwhile, Telangana State Vidyut Karmika Sangham affiliated to TRS claimed that the talks with the managements were successful as they had responded positively on most of the demands. Its leaders Johnson, Prakash, Ch. Ramesh, Current Rao, Devender Reddy and others said there was no need to go for strike as they had faith in the managements.

Earlier in the day, the TETUF has decided to extend its support to the RTC employees strike and stage a protest in their support on Wednesday.