As employees of the Ceylon Electricity Board (CEB) launch a token strike by calling in ‘sick’ today, the Ministry of Power and Energy yesterday assured that the people would not suffer a power cut.
The National Electricity Workers’ Association (NEWA) had threatened to go on a 24 hour strike which would cause serious power outages in the country today in protest of a recent salary increase given to CEB engineers.
They allege that the engineers’ salaries were increased by 70-120 percent with effect from 1 January 2015 with no corresponding increase to other workers at the CEB. The strike is supported by the unions of electrical superintendents, executives, technological service, accountants, clerks, drivers, security and minor employees.
Director (Development) and the Media Spokesperson of the Ministry of Power and Renewable Energy Sulakshana Jayawardena speaking to the Daily News said the engineers would report to work as usual and that work would go ahead as normal.
“We have taken all necessary steps to ensure that there would be no power outages”, he said.
He explained that the CEB had decided to go for a unified service grade for all employees in the CEB and thus different grades were identified with specific salary scales. The Technical and Financial grades have had their salary scales decided on but others grades are yet to do so.
“The Engineers grades were approved and when they were submitted to the CEB board, the board asked that the other grades too be finalized. So a committee was appointed to look into and review all categories and we are expecting their report to be submitted to the board soon”, said Jayawardena.
The Unions in the meantime allege that the CEB would have to spend close to Rs.600 million on the salary hike for engineers and they have complained to the CID, FCID and CIABOC in 2015 against what they call an illegal increase. The cases are still pending in the Supreme Courts and Court of Appeal.
NEWA General Secretary Ranjan Jeyalal was not available for comment despite several attempts made to contact him.
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