Nearly 1,000 electricity contract workers began their strike in the district on Tuesday in protest against the government’s alleged indifference to their problems.
However, power generation and supply were not affected much as the permanent employees were roped in to put in extra hours of duty to compensate for the absence of striking workers.
The contract workers staged a protest at Gymkhana grounds in the city as the government did not give any concrete assurance hours after inviting them for talks scheduled to be held at Vidyut Soudha in Hyderabad on December 23.
They regretted that this was not the first time that the government sought to persuade them to give up their genuine demands. It continued to discriminate them against the permanent workers not only in the scale of wages but also working conditions.
An SPDCL official told The Hindu disciplinary action was contemplated against the workers who abstained from duties in spite of the promise to give their demands a ‘sympathetic consideration’.
Meanwhile, YSR Congress (president Y.S. Jaganmohan Reddy expressed solidarity with the agitating workers and promised to espouse their cause in the Assembly session. He deplored the government’s attitude to the contract workers, saying that they were doing a thankless job in the public sector power utilities on unequal terms and in tough environments.
MLAs Kodali Sri Venkateswara Rao (Nani) and Jaleel Khan and party leaders Jogi Ramesh and P. Gowtham Reddy were among those present.
