LUDHIANA: Powercom and Transco employees remained on strike on the second day on Tuesday against the ‘indifferent attitude’ of Punjab government towards their demands. Around 85% of the technical and clerical staff continued its agitation against the pension issue. However, union leaders had to reportedly struggle hard to bring employees together for the strike. The agitation had started on Monday midnight and was likely to continue till Tuesday midnight.According to the employees, Powercom has refused from taking responsibility of pension of those employees who had got retirement before unbundling of the board. “Authorities are only ready to responsibility of those who would retire now. Government had promised that there would be no changes in the service conditions after the unbundling. However, several changes were now being implemented,” he added.Apart from this, employees are also demanding fresh recruitments so as to deal with staff crunch. Against the 55% posts lying vacant in Powercom and total sanctioned staff for central zone being 8,840, only 5,966 posts have been filled and 2,874 are still lying vacant. Out of this, 6,388 posts are sanctioned for technical employees. However, only 4,717 have been filled. Talking about the agitation, Swaran Singh, president, Joint Forum, said that they have been demanding for rollback of the Energy Act 2003 because it is ‘against the rights’ of employees. “Those who had got retirement before the unbundling would not get any pension from Powercom. This is totally unjustified. We also held a meeting with chief minister Parkash Singh Badal twice following the unbundling and had asked the management to solve these issues. However, the management has not tried to talk to us till date,” he added.Meanwhile, senior officers had to face a tough time in managing the power supply and department had to appoint XENs and SDOs for ensuring uninterrupted power supply. The JEs and linemen who had not participated in the strike had a tough time in rectifying the snags in various residential areas.However, one of the Powercom officials stated that power supply was normal. “There were no problems since we staged a peaceful protest,” he added.“Powercom employees should also think about the residents before holding such agitations. We have to suffer a lot due to technical snags and power failure,” said Kavita, a resident from Model Town.Gurdeep Singh, a resident from Haibowal, said, “Why should we be made to suffer. Employees should find some other way of protest instead of creating problems for people.”