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8000 UP employees return to work

Sharat Pradhan in Lucknow

As many as 8000 of the striking 87,000 power employees in Uttar Pradesh have returned to work , government spokesman Rohit Nandan told rediff.com on Thursday morning.

The return of these employees, followed by the softening of the stand by Energy Minister Naresh Agarwal who has agreed to hold talks with the employees' leaders later today, is seen as a positive move towards ending the five-day-old impasse, that led to largescale disruption of power throughout the sprawling state.

The strike was provoked by major reforms effected in the power sector, where doors to long-term privatisation were opened by restructuring the giant UP State Electricity Board into three independent corporate entities.

The softening of the government's stand came following the meeting of some prominent national trade union leaders with a UP minister in Lucknow and later with Union Energy Minister R Kumaramangalam in New Delhi yesterday.

Earlier, the state government had terminated the services of 72 engineers while five trade union leaders, booked under the National Security Act on the charge of sabotaging the power systems, had been sent to jail for six months.

On the other hand, power workers of other northern states -- Delhi, Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan, Himachal Pradesh and Jammu and Kashmir -- had proceeded on a three-day work-to-rule agitation on Tuesday, as a mark of solidarity with their striking counterparts in UP. They propose to take out protest rallies in different state capitals on Friday.

According to Shailendra Dubey, convenor and spokesman of the UPSEB Employees Joint Action Committee, "senior trade union leaders of other state electricity board employees were to meet Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee as well."

He claimed, "The government had softened its stand and agreed for talks simply because realisation had dawned that the situation in UP could spread to the entire country."

Dubey ruled out "any compromise short of revival of UPSEB", that stood dissolved with effect from January 16 morning, when the three new corporate entities came into being. While two of the corporations are entrusted with the task of thermal generation and hydro electric generation, the third one would look after both transmission and distribution.

Rohit Nandan, however, maintains, "This was only a stop-gap arrangement as the scheme evolved by the government clearly spells out total privatisation over a period of five years."

He reiterated the government's assurance about not only "ensuring job security to all the employees, but also retirement benefits as admissible to them under the dissolved UPSEB."

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