Tangedco suspends electricity officials for poor performance

The Tamil Nadu Generation and Distribution Corporation (Tangedco) has suspended an assistant engineer and a junior engineer based on a review meeting conducted by Electricity Minister V. Senthilbalaji. The review meeting was conducted at Kalaivanar Arangam on Friday.

A senior official of Tangedco said M. Shanmugam, working as a junior engineer in New Washermenpet office of Chennai North, and V. Mageshwari, working as an assistant engineer in Thoraipakkam, have been suspended based on the feedback received from senior officials for their performance in not bringing down the complaints registered through the Minnagam Call Centre.

The suspension of the two engineers has created anger among the electricity staff of the Operation and Management Department. The engineers, through the office-bearers of various engineers’ unions, met the Chairman and Managing Director Rajesh Lakhoni on Monday evening with a list of demands.

An office-bearer of the engineers union said a lot of pressure was being put on local officials to give preference only for complaints received through the Minnagam Call Centre. He said before the centre was launched complaints received through the centralised call number 1912 was automatically routed to the Fuse Off Call (FoC) offices during night time with the FoC team rectifying the electricity issues. But now all calls are being routed through assistant engineers/junior engineers, resulting in heavy workloads.

A memorandum presented to the CMD by the Tamil Nadu Power Engineers’ Organisation has demanded providing adequate and quality materials to prevent recurrent power complaints.

A senior official of the Tangedco said the action to suspend the officials were based on the performance report, where recurring complaints were received in the Minnagam Centre and to remove their ‘lethargic’ attitude.

Regarding the additional workload from the Minnagam complaint calls, the senior official said in the new system, the greivances were routed to local officials to make them aware of issues that needed to be prevented in the future.

Source: Read Full Article