1 week Ago
Ahead of the peak summer season, substation workers of Punjab State Power Corporation Limited (PSPCL) are sounding alarms over the growing struggle to maintain power supply amid a crippling staff shortage. Workers say the crisis stems from cadre restructuring orders in 2019 and 2022, which slashed manpower across substations in Ludhiana. As a result, some substations are being handled by a single worker.
This slows response time during outages and puts both safety and power reliability at risk. Ashok Kumar, a member of the Grid Maintenance Sangharsh Committee, said, “Earlier, there were around eight to nine staff members for substation operations, including three substation assistants, a junior engineer, four teammates and one oil cleaner. Now, we are left with just three operators.
The workload is exhausting and we’re unable to take weekly off, emergency leave or even gazetted holidays.” Kumar further alleged that at least nine trained technical workers have been reassigned to clerical posts at PSPCL offices. “Skilled manpower is being used for paperwork while ground staff struggle to keep up,” he said.
A member of the PSEB Employees Federation (AITUC), Punjab, added, “Most substations in rural areas are located in remote belts. After the introduction of Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA), certain technical posts were abolished, leaving just one or two employees to run entire stations. These workers remain vulnerable to mishaps with no help in sight.
” Rakesh Kumar, another committee member, said that in the absence of trained staff, officiating duties of substation assistants are being given to untrained teammates and Grade IV workers to manage 66 KV substations. “Although these workers develop the basic understandings of functionality of equipment installed in grids, they are not trained enough to handle them independently, putting their lives at risk,” he said. Soban Singh, one of the workers, said,” Despite Ludhiana being an industrial hub that contributes nearly one-third of PSPCL’s total revenue, the corporation has failed to equip its substations here with adequate technical staff.
The load and pressure in an industrial city like Ludhiana are different. Power transformer load shifting, emergency restoration, 66kV and 11kV operations, these are not one-man jobs. But that’s what most of our staff are dealing with.
” When contacted, chief engineer (protection and maintenance wing) Punnardeep Singh Brar said, “We are managing the situation with whatever staff we have. Recruitment is pending with higher authorities.” Regarding the deployment of technical staff to clerical duties, he clarified, “To manage office workload, some staff members were temporarily assigned clerical tasks.
Once the recruitment of clerical staff is done, they will be relieved of these duties.”.
