Port Blair, Jan 02: Workers and employees of Electricity Department under the aegis of the Joint Action Committee of Electricity Unions staged a demonstration in front of the Secretariat on 30th December, 2011 to protest, against the arbitrary decision of the Administration to hand over various functions/works of the Electricity Department to private firms in the name of Common Service Centres. Hundreds of employees and workers participated in the mass demonstration who later took out a procession, went to the Office premises of the Superintending Engineer, Electricity Department, staged a demonstration there and then converged into a public meeting at Tiranga Park, Aberdeen Bazar. Addressing the public meeting, leaders of the Joint Action Committee criticized the Administration for not even discussing with the Unions the issue raised by the employees and workers. They said that assigning of government work/functions to private firms is part of the privatizations-spree followed by the central government over the years. B. Chandrachoodan, D. Laxman Rao, Veeranna, NKP Nair and Vine^sh Narayan addressed the meeting which was presided over by M. Sadasivan. A resolution was passed in the public meeting urging the Administration to withdraw the assigning of payment of electricity bills to private firms and to restore the work to Electricity Department. In the meantime, the Bijli Kaamgar Union (CITU) has conducted a mass demonstration in front of the office of the Executive Engineer, Electricity Department at Diglipur on the above issue in which a large number of workers participated.
