A state wide protest was held at sixty locations of Himachal Pradesh by employees and engineers of Himachal Pradesh State Electricity Board Ltd to highlight their various demands.
The protest was held under the banner of HPSEBL Joint Front of employees and demonstrations were held at the offices of Chief Engineers, Circle and Divisional Offices and head office of the board.
Joint Front Convener Hira Lal Verma said, “As many as 51 posts of engineers have been abolished by the Board Management, 81 outsourced drivers have been dismissed from the service and the state government has not taken any decision on their demand of implementing old pension scheme (OPS) to board employees despite the issue being taken up with the state government many times. “
He said, “The HPSEBL employees have been demanding restoration of OPS for the past 21 months, and the government’s recent actions have fueled further unrest as outsourced drivers serving for over a decade have been sacked by the board management.”
The Joint Front leaders have demanded that the state government and the HPSEBL management should immediately concede their demands and put hold to outsourcing of the Board services under the garb of carrying out reforms.
They warned, “If our demands aren’t met, the Joint Front of HPSEBL employees would be forced to strike work and bring the operation of the Board to halt.”
The Joint Front has also decided to intensify their agitation in the coming days.
