Telangana Electricity Employees’ Joint Action Committee have cautioned that the they are ready to go on a lightning strike along with the electricity employees across the country to strongly oppose the amendments planned by the Centre to the Electricity Act by introducing Electricity Amendment Bill 2022 during the ongoing monsoon session of Parliament.
Chairman of the JAC K. Prakash and convenor N. Shivaji said in a statement issued here on Friday that they were ready to go on strike anytime as part of the All India Federation of Electricity Employees call to protest the amendments to the Electricity Act planned against the interests of farming community, public sector power utilities and their employees and consumers.
The JAC leaders said the Centre was trying to introduce the Bill in Parliament without holding any consultations with the stakeholders and it reflected the Centre’s dictatorial attitude. Terming the trend as as dangerous, they said all electricity employees would attend to duties by wearing black badges from Monday.
While the people were engaged in celebrating ‘Azadi Ka Amrit Mahotsav’ or 75 years of the country’s Independence, the Centre was trying to push through the anti-people Bill. They analysed the attempt as the biggest conspiracy in the independent India to handover the power utilities developed by sparing lakhs of crores of rupees of public money over the years at throwaway prices to private and corporate companies.
They asked all stakeholders to express solidarity with the electricity employees for any movement action plan to be taken up by them as part of the all-India federation call against the new Bill.
The JAC held an emergency meeting in the wake of release of the Electricity Amendment Bill draft on Friday. Tuljaram Singh, Tirupathaiah, Ganesh Rao, Shareef, Arogya Rani, Anil Reddy, Vinod, Current Rao, Shravank Kumar Gupta, Praveen, Prabhakar and others participated in the meeting. They have decided to organise protests against the Bill in different forms from Monday (August 8) at all offices of the power utilities from circle-level.
