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UPPCL engineers’ demand for higher pay boomerangs
Uttar Pradesh government questions why loss ridden corporation giving higher salaries to its personnel and deviating from a policy decision
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The demand by Uttar Pradesh Power Corporation Ltd (UPPCL) engineers for a hike in their existing pay scales has apparently boomeranged on them. The state government has, instead, questioned the very logic of the heavily loss-ridden corporation providing higher salaries to its engineers and other personnel than what the government employees are entitled to.
The development comes when the engineers are organising protests to demand, among other things, higher pay scales. In this backdrop, special secretary (energy) Bhawani Singh Khangaraut on Wednesday wrote a letter to the UPPCL managing director (MD), questioning the basis of the Assured Career Progression Scheme (ACPS) that UPPCL implemented for its employees in variance with the one available to the state government employees.
The ACP scheme envisages placement of employees in the higher pay-scale/grant of financial benefits (through financial upgrade) even if they are not promoted to the next level after a particular period.
Referring to the UPPCL director’s (personnel and appointment) letter dated February 16, 2021, Singh, in his letter, pointed out that the revised pay-scales as recommended by the sixth pay commission had been in effect in UPPCL since January 1, 2006.
“Under the revised pay structure, UPPCL personnel get time-bound pay-scales/ACP after an interval of nine years, 14 years and 19 years whereas the state government employees are entitled to the same after an interval of 10 years, 16 years and 26 years,” he said in the letter.
“It is important to note that the UPPCL approved higher pay-scales to its employees deviating from the government’s policy decision despite the corporation having very high cumulative losses/deficit because of which energy corporations are facing unnecessary financial burden,” the officer added.
The government not only rejected the UPPCL’s proposal for further upgrading engineers’ pay-scales, but also asked the management to explain the reasons why the corporation provided higher pay-scales to its officers and other personnel ignoring earlier government orders (GOs) in this regard.
UPPCL engineers, according to people dealing with the issue, get one of the highest salaries and best perks in the state despite the corporation’s fragile financial state.
“A person who joins as a junior engineer in UPPCL gets more than ₹2 lakh per month before five years of his retirement. Similarly, anybody joining as an assistant engineer gets a monthly salary of between ₹2.75 lakh and ₹3 lakh five years before retirement as executive engineer/superintending engineer/ chief engineer,” they said.
“Apart from this, they also have access to use of unmetered electricity and full medical expenses to their and their dependents’ treatment even after retirement,” they added. UPPCL, according to the information sourced from the UP Electricity Regulatory Commission (UPERC), currently spends around ₹2800 crore annually on its employees in terms of salaries and perks.
UP Rajya Vidyut Parishad Abhyanta Sangh general secretary Prabhat Singh, however, said, that there were serious discrepancies in the pay scales of assistant engineers and the same must be corrected because highly educated AEs get less salary than junior engineers and this, according to him, was demoralising for them.
“We demand the management/government to fix the appointment grade of AEs at ₹6600 and the third ACP grade at ₹11000,” he stressed.
UPPCL engineers’ monthly salaries (approx) before five years of retirement is as follows: Junior engineer (More than ₹2 lakh), executive engineer ( ₹2.50 lakh) and superintending engineer ( ₹3 lakh).
