No objection on appointment of gangman posts: COTEE writes to Tangedco

Chennai

Speaking to reporters here, COTEE general secretary S Rajendran denied the allegation of the Electricity Minister P Thangamani that the appointment of gangman in the Tangedco was getting delayed due to the court case.

“According to Section 9A of the Industrial Disputes Act, the trade union should be notified by the Tangedco whenever it seeks to create new posts. But it was not followed when it issued a notification to create gangman posts and abolishing 5,000 posts, which were remaining vacant for over three years. The Minister had announced that the contract workers, who worked in the restoration of power supply during the natural calamities, would be made permanent. However, it was not fulfilled. So we filed a case in the High Court,” he explained.

Even as the case was pending, the Tangedco went ahead with the recruitment to shortlist 14,954 persons and decided to recruit 10,000 among them, Rajendran said, noting that earlier the utility used to go ahead with the appointment on condition that it depends on the outcome of the court case. On the contrary, he alleged that Tangedco decided to fill up 50 per cent of vacancies through work contract against which all the trade unions staged a protest on December 21 forcing the management to scrap the outsourcing orders.

He pointed out that there are about 52,000 vacancies in the Tangedco including 23,000 field assistants and 8,000 wireman posts. “The gangman posts were created to do the field assistants and wireman works. We have given a letter to the CMD stating that the appointment orders for the gangman could be given and the contract workers should be regularised in the unfilled vacant posts,” he demanded.