Goa: Electricity department ignores JERC directives, begins hiring

PANAJI: Despite the

Joint Electricity Regulatory Commission

’s long pending and repeated directions to the

Goa electricity department

to submit a

systematic manpower study

to analyze its employee strength to reduce its manpower and related costs, the department hasn’t complied. Instead it has gone ahead and recently advertised for 62 posts of junior engineers.

In its latest petition to the JERC, in response to the directive, the department has stated that it is yet to scrutinize a report that has been prepared by a consultant. The report will subsequently be submitted to the state government for a decision. “Post decision from state government the report will be submitted to the Hon’ble Commission,” the department stated.

At the JERC public hearing on Wednesday, Goa consumer action network convener Roland Martins said it was a serious concern that the department despite having so many employees, couldn’t read the report prepared by the consultant. “Instead of submitting the manpower study, they have started recruiting again,” Martins said.

In its past orders the commission has raised the issue of the high employee costs, pointing out that every employee in the department served only around 100 consumers against the national average of one employee serving 2500 consumers. This shows that the department in Goa is extremely overstaffed, the commission had stated.

The commission had also observed that the department still has employees such as draughtsman, mechanics, mason mistry, plumber, carpenter, turner, welder, draftry, lift operator and blue printer who have no contribution to mainstream business. It further pointed out that the employee to consumer ratio was higher than even Puducherry and Chandigarh and stated that the issue of rationalization of manpower cannot be postponed indefinitely as it is not in the interest of consumers.

Prashant Anvekar representing the Ferro Alloys and Steel Manufacturing association of Goa, present at the public hearing said the high number of employees is a concern and only results in a large chunk of the government’s budgetary support to the department being spent on employees’ salaries.

The commission had earlier directed the department to prepare a systematic manpower study report before October 30, 2016 and file it along with the next petition, failing which he commission would be constrained to take action against the petitioner.


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