More than 32,000 power complaints are still pending in PSPCL’s Central Zone as the strike by outsourced employees enters its second month, disrupting complaint processing and routing to field staff.
Outsourced employees working at the Nodal Complaint Centres (NCCs), which process and route complaints to junior engineers and field staff, have remained off duty since July 23. We had registered a complaint through 1912, but there was no effective response for several hours. Because they are not getting their work done through the normal process, “Consumers are coming to the office. Because assurances given during earlier discussions had not been implemented, pSEB Employees Federation AITUC state secretary Gurpreet Singh Mehdudaan said the employees were continuing their agitation.
Their absence has affected complaint distribution, typing work and completion of job orders at sub-divisions, creating delays between the registration of a complaint and its assignment to the concerned field team. The impact is being felt by consumers. “The fuse went off in the evening and we got the supply back around midnight. “We are managing the available manpower and making alternative arrangements to attend complaints and restore supply.
BRS Nagar resident Gupal Singh said a blown fuse at his house left his family without electricity for around seven hours. We had to keep waiting for the supply to be restored,” he said. Sonal Sharma, who recently visited a PSPCL sub-division office for consumer-related work, said the disruption was evident at the ground level. When there is a problem, people expect the complaint system to route it to the concerned staff, but the delay is making consumers visit offices themselves,” she said. Chief engineer, PSPCL Central Zone, Jagdev Singh Hans said the corporation was making efforts to minimise inconvenience to consumers. The absence of outsourced employees has affected certain consumer-service functions, but our teams are making every effort to ensure that complaints are attended to at the earliest,” he said.
