Three days into the PSPCL employees’ strike, the utility’s complaint redressal system has virtually collapsed across Ludhiana, with around 33,000 rain-related electricity complaints piling up across the Central Zone between midnight on Wednesday and 6 am on Thursday. With nearly 90% of the technical workforce staying away from duty, thousands of complaints remained unresolved on Thursday, leaving consumers across the district to endure prolonged power outages.
Event Context
The situation has become more challenging as all 120 grid staff members posted in the Central Zone are participating in the strike, forcing sub-divisional officers (SDOs), executive engineers (XENs), additional superintending engineers (SEs) and other senior officers to operate grid substations round the clock to prevent a breakdown of the power supply network.
Chief engineer, PSPCL Central Zone, Jagdev Singh Hans said the department was making emergency arrangements with the limited staff available.
Our priority is to maintain uninterrupted electricity supply. Senior officers have been deployed at all critical grid substations, and many of them have not gone home for the last three days as they have been working continuously. However, with most of the technical staff on strike, restoration of local faults is taking much longer than usual, Hans said.
Official attendance records showed that 1,775 of the 2,557 employees posted in the Central Zone remained on strike on Thursday, reflecting an overall participation of 69.42%. Officials, however, said the impact on public services was much greater because the strike has been led primarily by the technical workforce responsible for field operations.
Employee unions said the agitation would continue until the Punjab government addresses their long-pending demands, including payment of pending dearness allowance (DA), restoration of the Old Pension Scheme (OPS), filling vacant posts, withdrawal of the July 17, 2020 government order and resolution of other service-related issues.
Team Analysis
While electricity supply from major substations continued, restoration of local faults came to a near standstill as the strike crippled the utility’s entire field machinery. Linemen, junior engineers (JEs), grid staff, complaint handling teams and employees manning the 1912/NCC call centre remained off duty, disrupting every stage of the complaint redressal process.
Under the normal mechanism, complaints registered through the 1912 helpline are assigned by NCC operators to the respective subdivision, where the concerned JE deputes linemen to attend to the fault. However, with employees at every level of this chain participating in the strike, complaints have continued to accumulate without being assigned or attended.
Consumers in several parts of the city reported waiting for hours for restoration after rain triggered local faults such as blown fuses, snapped conductors, damaged distribution transformers and feeder breakdowns. Officials said Agar Nagar and Focal Point divisions were among the worst affected, with a large number of pending complaints.
The strike has exposed PSPCL’s existing manpower shortage, with officials admitting that although clerical work is continuing, field operations have been severely hit because the technical workforce is largely absent. Routine maintenance, fault rectification, inspections, new connections and consumer services have all been affected.
