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After privatisation, the end of the subsidy of consumers here will mean that consumers will have to buy electricity at Rs 10 to 12 per unit. Read further on Dynamite News:
27L workers protest against electricity privatisation
Lucknow: On the call of the National Coordination Committee of Electricity Employees and Engineers, the power workers, junior engineers and engineers of all the states of the country on Thursday demonstrated in protest against the privatisation of electricity being done by 42 districts in Uttar Pradesh.
Chairman of All India Power Engineers Federation (AIPEF), Shailendra Dubey and Secretary General P Ratnakar Rao said that the UP government has decided to privatise Purvanchal Electricity Distribution Corporation and Dakshinanchal Power Distribution Corporation by giving misleading data in DISCOMS of the state.
Dubey said, "Because of it there is a lot of anger among the electricity workers."
The office-bearers said that the electricity workers of UP have been continuously agitating for the last 06 months, but it is a matter of great regret that the government has not held talks with them even once.
They informed that due to wrong power purchase agreements in UP, Discoms have to pay Rs 6,761 crore annually to private power generation companies without purchasing a single unit of electricity.
The office-bearers said that apart from this, an additional burden of about Rs 10,000 crore per year is coming from private houses at very expensive power purchase rates.
"In UP, government departments owe Rs 14,400 crore electricity revenue. According to the policy of the UP government, free electricity is provided to the farmers, electricity consumers below the poverty line are provided electricity at the rate of Rs 3 per unit while the cost of electricity is Rs 7.85 paise per unit. Weavers are also subsidised. The amount of subsidy is about 22,000 crore rupees. The UP government tells them all the deficit and on this basis, privatisation has been decided," they said.
The office-bearers alleged that it seems that the officials of UP Power Corporation Limited and some big officials of the government are in collusion with selected private houses.
"They want to sell Discom assets worth lakhs of crores of rupees to private houses at throw away prices," they said.
The office-bearers said that in eastern UP lives the poorest people of the state.
"In Dakshinanchal, very poor people live in the area of Bundelkhand where there is also a problem of drinking water. After privatisation, the end of the subsidy of consumers here will mean that consumers will have to buy electricity at the rate of Rs 10 to 12 per unit, which they will not be able to do. Thus the poor people of UP are being pushed into the lantern era," they alleged.
The office-bearers said that in protest against the privatisation of electricity being done in UP, 27 lakh power workers across the country staged a widespread protest during the lunch hours, holiday on all districts and projects and showed their solidarity with the power workers of UP.
The office-bearers said, "Electricity employees have warned that if any harassment of any electricity workers of UP, then all the 27 lakh electricity workers of the country will not be mute spectators and will be forced to move on the road and agitate, which will have all the responsibility of the state government," they said.
The office-bearers said that on Thursday big demonstrations were held mainly at Hyderabad, Trivandrum, Vijayawada, Chennai, Bangalore, Mumbai, Nagpur, Raipur, Bhopal, Jabalpur,
Vadodara, Rajkot, Guwahati, Shillong, Kolkata, Bhubaneswar, Patna, Ranchi, Srinagar, Jammu, Shimla, Dehradun, Patiala, Jaipur, Kota, Hisar and Lucknow.
