Vacant posts in HPSEB not being filled up, alleges union

Nahan, Mar 11 (UNI) The Himachal Pradesh State Electricity Board was not serious in filling up the 20,000-odd vacancies at the sub-ordinate level for the last several years, while the number of officer-level posts were increasing by the day, an employee union president today alleged.

When the HPSEB was set up in 1972, it had 42,000 employees and 36 years after it came into existence, the number of employees had come down to a meagre 20,000, Board's state technical employee union president Dev Raj Sharma alleged at a press conference here.

He said this had occurred at a time when the work load had almost doubled and stressed that ''the number of the employees should have increased to 80,000 instead of being reduced to 20,000.'' On the other hand, the number of posts in the officer-level had been increasing by the day to adjust engineers, Himachal Administrative Service (HAS) and Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officers, he added.

Mr Sharma also alleged that the board had not initiated any steps to recruit on compassionate grounds about 450 people, who were kin of employees who had died while performing their duties.

He urged the authorities to at least recruit the people seeking job on compassionate grounds.

UNI XC AS JN JS1922