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Parts of UP without power for last 36 hours

Sharat Pradhan in Lucknow

The power crisis in Uttar Pradesh worsened today, when most of the 87,000 employees of the UP State Electricity Board stuck to their call for a strike. They were protesting the reforms the government had ordered in the state's power structure. Parts of the state, including the state capital have been without power for the past 36 hours since many employees had already struck work.

The much-awaited reforms came into force at midnight, when the UPSEB was broken up into three independent corporate entities, each of which were to separately look after the state's thermal generation, hydro-electric power generation and the transmission and distribution systems respectively.

"This was the first step to reforms in the state's power sector, where large-scale decentralisation and privatisation in a phased manner is envisaged over the next three years," Chief Minister Ram Prakash Gupta said.

Engineers and other technical and non-technical employees of the board were opposed to the move and claimed the government was becoming a tool in the hands of the World Bank, which they claimed was the driving force behind the restructuring.

The World Bank had, in the recent past, decided to stop all financial assistance to UPSEB until the reforms it proposed were implemented.

As the stalemate between the employees and the government continued, many employees chose to strike work well before their deadline of January 15, plunging several parts of the state in darkness. The chief minister and Energy Minister Naresh Agarwal had earlier promised to ensure uninterrupted power supply in all parts of the state. While the state's key power installations were entrusted to the army and officials of the National Thermal Power Corporation and the National Hydroelectric Power Corporation, the problem arose at the distribution level.

Neither the energy minister's parleys with the agitating workers nor the high court's pronouncement that the strike was illegal had any effect on the employees.

Prominent leader of the engineers and employees co-ordination committee Shailendra Dubey said, "We will move the country's apex court against the high court order." He argued that the proposed reforms were neither in the interest of the organisation nor that of the employees. If the board had suffered heavy losses, it was because of the burden of subsidies forced on it by the government for the rural sector, he said, adding that the government was willing to continue bearing the weight of the subsidies under the proposed new arrangement.

Many areas in the state capital have had no electricity for the past 36 hours.

"From executive engineers to the lowest technician, no one is working," said a chief engineer who said superintending engineers and chief engineers had to run from one sub-station to another to restore power.

The government was all set to pave way for its ultimate objective of privatising the plagued power sector in a big way.

As a part of its aim to let the three new corporations open their respective accounts on a clean slate, the government had decided to write off not only loans amounting to Rs 195 billion, but also the board's cumulative losses, amounting to another Rs 106 billion.

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