CHENNAI: CITU-affiliated Central Organisation of Tamil Nadu Electricity Employees (COTEE) on Tuesday temporarily called off its protest after TANGEDCO chairman and managing director assured to hold a meeting with the Electricity Minister on July 12 and Madras High Court issued notice to Finance, Electricity and TANGEDCO on unfilled vacancies.
About 10,000 employees affiliated with the union gathered in front of TANGEDCO offices for the indefinite protest on Tuesday.
T Jaisankar, president of COTEE said that the utility attempted to stop the protest by approaching the High Court, but the judge has ordered notices to secretaries of finance and energy departments returnable by July 22.
"The court has also instructed Tangedco to reply to the demands of protesting employees,” he said.
In the talks held with the TANGEDCO management, he said that steps would be taken to hold a meeting with electricity minister Thangam Thennarasu on July 12.
The union held the protest demanding fulfilment of 20 point-charter-of-demands including filling up of 53,000 vacancies.
There are over 33,000 vacancies in the field-level worker categories including field assistant, junior assistant, technical assistant and assistant engineers.
Apart from this, there are another 20,000 vacancies in other categories.
The vacancies lead to an increase in workload causing accidents to temporary workers and wiremen at the field level.
The union urged TANGEDCO to stop the practice of redeployment and discontinuing posts as against the workload agreement.