CITU Himachal has strongly opposed the drive for privatization of water under Municipal Corporation Shimla
CITU State Committee Himachal Pradesh has strongly opposed the drive for privatization of water under Municipal Corporation Shimla. Tender for Sutlej Water Project is being given to Suez India Company. The work of maintenance and distribution of Shimla city water scheme will be handed over to this company under BOT for the next several years. In this way the employment of hundreds of outsourced personnel working under SJPNL through electronic corporation will be adversely affected and their job security will be at risk. CITU has demanded regularization of these employees by banning the outsourced system.
CITU State President Vijendra Mehra and General Secretary Prem Gautam have said that a script is being written for privatization of water system under the guise of providing 24-hour water supply in the capital Shimla. Tender for Sutlej Water Project is being given to Suez India Company. In this process, the jobs of the employees working under the purview of Shimla Jal Prabandhan Nigam Limited are under threat. Outsourced employees posted in SJPNL will now be shifted to another company. A company named IPE Global will now deploy them. Earlier Shimla Jal Management Corporation had hired these employees through electronic corporation. Now they are being shifted to another company within three years. Due to this, the future of more than 130 outsourced workers is threatening. The next target of this privatization campaign may be the Saheb Society and the employment of hundreds of employees working under it is also going to be threatened in the near future.
The SJPNL company says that the appointment of these personnel will be recommended to the new company and the new company will appoint them only after seeing the work of these personnel. This argument of SJPNL has made it clear that the new company will not take all the outsourced workers back to the job and will throw out the employees by giving a false argument of performance. This is bound to lead to layoffs of employees. The employees who will be taken on the job, they will be given fresh appointment and their seniority will end. This will also adversely affect job security under their gratuity and outsource policy. It is also clear from this that instead of regularizing the employment of outsourced workers, they will be pushed towards a short term fixed term employment. In this way the safety of the employees is at great risk. He has demanded regularization of all these employees and ban on outsourced system.
