COIMBATORE: For years, Tamil Nadu faced an acute electricity shortage. The lean years are over for industries and consumers in the State, but not for the staff of the Tamil Nadu Generation and Distribution Corporation Limited (TANGEDCO). Data obtained under the Right to Information (RTI) Act in September 2019 revealed there were vacancies in over a third of TANGEDCO’s sanctioned posts.
This means out of a sanctioned 1,33,400 posts, a staggering 48,439 posts have been vacant for years. The largest number of vacancies are in the posts of field staff — the workers who actually fix problems in electricity lines — with 35,209 posts out of the sanctioned 88,269 posts lying vacant.
The figures explain why many consumers in the State may spend hours in the darkness despite repeated complaints about power cuts in their locality. Worse, the vacancies leave TANGEDCO's existing staff working under a great deal of pressure, often in mortal danger with a whopping 668 workers having died on duty from 2006-07 to March 31, 2019.
Looking good — on paper
According to TANGEDCO's own norms, there should be 20 field staff in each section office of the corporation — seven field assistants, seven wiremen, two foremen, two line inspectors, a commercial assistant and a commercial inspector.
Each section office services an area of about 10 to 15 kms, with at least 12,000 to 14,000 electricity connections. TANGEDCO's norms stipulate that there should be one wireman and one helper for every 1,400 electricity connections.
While duty hours for field staff are from 8am to 5.15pm, they are required to fix any problems that may arise outside of those hours also. They are not paid overtime but all of TANGEDCO's staff are permanent employees entitled to pension (if they had joined before 2003) and the contributory pension scheme (if they joined after 2014). The starting salary of a field staff is Rs 23,000.
TANGEDCO provides them rope belts to climb poles, and an earth rod to check whether electricity is passing through the line or not. It has recently started providing them helmets as well. Their job includes attending to the complaints of electric fuse, meter problems, problem in electric pole, aside from regular maintenance work. TANGEDCO filled 900 field staff vacancies in 2017 and 2,500 in 2014.
A life in peril
Employees and unions allege that close to 40 per cent of the corporation’s section offices do not have a single field worker. As a result field staff from the next nearest section office — usually understaffed — are tasked with ensuring uninterrupted power supply to customers and responding to problems such as faults in services and maintenance work. Working on repairs alone, and under enormous physical and mental pressure, has had fatal consequences they said.
S Nirmal Kumar, a field worker from Erode pointed out that 2020 began on a sombre note with news of the death of field staff Vincent and Surya, who were electrocuted in Chennai. The two men had been repairing a transformer when tragedy struck. Yet, days later another TANGEDCO field worker met with a mishap on duty.
"On January 7, K Manikandan fell from a tree in Baralikadu in The Nilgiris district, while doing maintenance work on an electric pole,” Nirmal Kumar said. "He was injured and is being treated at a private hospital in Coimbatore," he said, adding that if there had been a helper with Manikandan, he would not have fallen. "In every section office, there are only one or two field workers managing all field works," C Shiva, a field worker in Namakkal, said.
“We are under the constant stress of attending to consumers’ phone calls demanding we rectify issues immediately. Inevitably, one field worker is forced to do the work of two or three," he said, explaining this could lead to dangerous, even fatal situations.
"In general, one person monitors whether or not electricity is passing through the line and the locates the source of the problem and rectifies it. Unfortunately, due to staff shortage, one person has to rectify the problem on his own," he said.
For instance, if a two-man team is on the job, one will flip the three AB switches in turn so the other can locate the source of the problem. If one of the switches won’t turn, he will alert the other worker.
"If a worker is alone and the switch won’t flip, he won’t be in a position to notice it. As a result, electricity from the transformer will pass through him. On an average, a field worker suffers 20-25 electric shocks a month," Shiva said.
Wireman A Laurence died in 2017 as a result of one such mishap. "He was working with the Coimbatore Metro. He went to attend to a complaint about power supply to commercial shops on 100 feet road. Electricity from a Genset machine passed to the pole and Laurence died,” his relative said.
The relative blames the death on the amount of stress Laurence was working under. “He was working day and night. As a result, he could not concentrate while on the job. Now, his family is struggling to make ends meet,” he said.
A TANGEDCO official in Coimbatore said Laurence was not the only field worker to die on duty in the past couple of years. Wireman Senthil Kumar and helper Shakthivel were also killed while doing repair work.
A long time demand
General Secretary of Central Organisation of Tamil Nadu Electricity Employees S Rajendran demanded that TANGEDCO fill at least 50 per cent of the vacant posts. “Field workers are performing their duties under a great deal of stress. They are frequently meeting with accidents, losing their limbs and, in some cases, lives,” Rajendran said, adding that TANGEDCO cited financial crises whenever the issue was raised. "If officials stop purchase of electricity from private players, TANGEDCO can recover from its financial crisis," he claimed.
Tamil Nadu Electricity Tholilar and Poriyalar Ikkiya Sangam (TNETPIS) state organization secretary K Veerasamy pointed out that Electricity Minister P Thangamani had said that as many as 2,900 field staff vacancies would be soon filled up. "So far, TANGEDCO has not taken any efforts to fill these vacancies," he alleged.
“Similarly, the administration has not conducted the internal selection for technical posts for the last 10 months. Due to the unfilled field staff and assistant engineer posts, consumers’ grievance cannot not be quickly resolved,” he said.
The consumer conundrum
“As per the Tamil Nadu Electricity Regulatory Commission norms of 2009, TANGEDCO has to rectify fuse problems in an hour in a city and in three hours in rural areas. If not it has to pay compensation to the consumers,” pointed out Coimbatore Consumer Voice (CVV) general secretary N Logu said.
This is hardly the experience of consumers. Logu said that consumers often had to wait a day, due to a shortage of field staff, for a complaint to be addressed.
N Jayabanu in Coimbatore had to wait much more than a day. "Two months ago, there was a fuse problem at my home, due to the heavy rain. I wrote a complaint in complaint book at a shop in Kaliveerampalayam. No worker came that day," she recalled.
With the household routine thrown out of whack and the children unable to sleep, she visited the Electricity Board office the next and registered a complaint again. She was given the phone number of a field worker. “I called him several times but he did not answer for a whole day.”
“On the third day, I called him again and he assured he would come by. Instead, a youngster, who does not work for the department, came and checked the connections. He rectified the problem,” she said, adding that the youth asked for Rs 300 as a "service charge" but she only paid Rs 200.
Crisis to end?
Electricity Minister P Thangamani told Express that the State government was taking steps to fill up the vacant posts. “We recently created a gangman post for erecting electricity poles and the process of appointing 5,000 gangmen is in progress. After that, we will fill assistant engineer and field staff vacancies,” he said. On purchase of electricity from private players at higher prices, he said this had greatly reduced.
"TANGEDCO produces 6,000 MW and the Centre provides another 6,000 MW of power. The remaining 3,000 MW is purchased from private players based on long-term agreements entered into long ago," he said, adding that all the electricity produced by TANGEDCO was being used by the State.
668 deaths
TANGEDCO’s data reveals that a shocking 668 of its department’s staff have died on duty between 2006-07 and March 31, 2019. Workers say that the staff shortage puts them at risk, having to do two-men jobs on their own.
