Bhubaneswar: Around 5,000 employees of the Central Electricity Supply Utility (Cesu) on Saturday wore black badges to protest against the management's "unlawful" decision to extend the agreement with its 14 distribution franchises.
The agreement, scheduled to expire in March, was extended to June. The employees also protested the visit of its chief executive officer (CEO) to Nimapara and demanded immediate scrapping of the agreement with the franchises on Saturday.
Cesu distributes power to nine districts of the state, including Bhubaneswar.
Under Cesu's privatisation and reform programme, it had given franchises to 14 of its 20 divisions in 2012-13 through an agreement to improve consumer service, grievance redress, healthy supply, investment in network development, reducing aggregate technical and commercial (AT&C) losses and 100 per cent billing, metering, collection, meter installations for a five-year period.
Central Electricity Employees Joint Co-ordination Committee convener Prasant Patnaik said: "No achievement with respect to the agreement has been achieved during these five years of operational activities. The AT&C losses continue to be a high 58 per cent. According to the agreement, they were supposed to bring it down to 15 per cent. But, they have failed miserably."
A committee official said: "If we reduce the AT&C losses only by 1 per cent, Cesu would be able to save nearly Rs 40 crore. But it has failed in this respect and did not pump any money to bring reforms in the power sectors."
"The way the Cesu authorities have directed engineers and employees to co-operate with the franchisees, instead of showing them the door, is unlawful and unfortunate."
Cesu, which is running on losses, is now struggling to pay salaries to its employees and has made an overdraft of Rs 500 crore to disburse salaries to its staff members. However, it has already paid more than Rs 160 crore to the franchises as profit share. "The entire power sector will collapse if the issues are not addressed," warned the committee.
On Friday, the workers demonstrated at its head office to protest against the decision. The Cesu CEO could not be contacted for comments.
