Electricity dept to recruit 15,000 personnel; no bribe for promotions: Minister Nirmalkumar

Chennai: At least 15,000 personnel will be recruited for various vacancies in the Tamil Nadu Power Distribution Corporation as well as state-owned green and generation companies, electricity and law minister R Nirmalkumar said on Monday.

Congratulating 300 assistant executive engineers who have been promoted as executive engineers, the minister said all vacancies in the electricity departments will be filled in the coming years and added that the promotion of eligible officers would take place without any need for bribe or brokers. “We have erased the two-part committee system to secure promotion as well as favourite position. Everything will happen as per seniority and vacancy positions will be published in a transparent manner,” he said.

The minister said a corruption-free govt is the agenda of the C Joseph Vijay-led TVK govt and the promotions and transfer will be based on merit, just as the law ministry,” he said. Nirmalkumar said he had already plugged 70% of govt fund leakages via inflated tenders and the remaining mistakes will be corrected in due course.

Referring to recent outages, the minister said, “more than 70% of the state’s transformers were over 20 years old leading to failures, while substations were also struggling to handle increasing electricity loads.” He said special teams had been deployed across the state to respond to complaints and restore supply at the earliest. In some localities, transformer and fuse-related faults had been rectified within 40 minutes, he added.

The minister said civic authorities had already been advised to impose stringent penalties on contractors and agencies that damaged underground power cables while carrying out excavation works. Such incidents were contributing to disruptions in urban areas, particularly in Chennai, he noted.