The Gujarat Electricity Board Engineers' Association (GEBEA) has demanded that instead of outsourcing the maintenance and operations work in Gujarat Energy Transmission Company Ltd (GETCO) to private firms, about 5,000 vacant posts should be filled will immediate effect.

Mr R B Savaliya, General Secretary of the GEBEA-GETCO, at the annual general meeting of the association on Sunday, said that the Gujarat Government's ban on new recruitments in GETCO since 1992-93 should be lifted as the existing staff were overburdened.

“Outsourcing contract in the 450 sub-stations out of the total 1,207 sub-stations had already been given to private power companies at a huge cost, imposing a heavy financial burden on GETCO, a subsidiary of erstwhile Gujarat Electricity Board (GEB),” he said.

Mr Savaliya said, “While the Gujarat Government was planning to set up new sub-stations and laying of new transmission lines for 24x7 power supply to farmers and to 18,000 villages across the State, about 5,000 posts were still vacant, in the absence of staff recruitment.”

He said in addition to carrying out their daily chores, GETCO engineers had been entrusted with the responsibility of training a team of eight persons each of the contracted private companies, who get their monthly remunerations from these private companies.

“How can the maintenance work of Rs 5 crore assets of electric substation be given to contractual workers, who might leave their companies after getting trained?” he said.

Mr Savaliya alleged that the aim of outsourcing was to benefit private power companies, “as a monthly amount of Rs 1.20 lakh was given to the private operator for each of the 450 sub-stations.”

“GETCO employees are capable of carrying out the work at much cheaper rate. But there is deliberate move behind not filling up vacancies and recruiting new staff in GETCO as most of the GETCO staff would retire after 2015,” he said.

comment COMMENT NOW