Joint front opposes proposed abolition of posts in HPSEBL

The Joint Front of HPSEBL Employees and Engineers expressed its displeasure over the proposed move of the state government and the management of the electricity board to abolish more than 50 posts of SE, Senior XEN and AE in the board.

At the meeting of the Joint Front in Shimla today, Front’s convener Lokesh Thakur and co-convener HL Verma said the abolition of these posts would hamper the functioning of HPSEBL. “It will amount to tampering with the basic structure of HPSEBL and cannot be decided unilaterally. The delegation of powers and could not be decided in isolation,” they said.

They said the works section had been created in the field offices, where the officer-in-charge must carry out frequent site inspections and other field related works in addition to routine administrative matters pertaining to the office. The Joint Front has already written a letter to the Chief Minister regarding the importance of these offices.

The joint front said that HPSEBL was already reeling under severe staff crunch, and the abolition of these posts will further aggravate the situation by creating an artificial scarcity of engineers at all levels. “Changing the basic structure of the organisation without consultation with the Joint Front will not only hamper the functioning of HPSEBL but will also be a betrayal of the bipartite agreement executed between GoHP and the Joint Front,” they said.

The joint front further pointed out that this move would be contrary to the creation of Chief Engineer and Superintending Engineer office at Hamirpur and Dehra, respectively. The Front decided that it would will apprise the Chief Minister and minister heading the sub- committee with facts and will request to keep the proposal on hold.