Power consumers bear brunt as operators stay away

Consumers making calls to report power outage to “fuse off” call centres of Tangedco in some parts of the city are unable to reach it as telephone operators who are not paid wages for last five months are not turning up for work.

According to sources in Tangedco unions, there are 68 fuse off call (FOC) centres  in Chennai and in parts of Kancheepuram and Tiruvallur districts. These area specific call centres have manpower of about 200 workers attending to consumer complaints round-the-clock. All FOCs have a telephone operator who will be working in three shifts, to receive complaints of power failures.

A private agency, which took the contract for operation of the FOCs failed to pay wages to the workers for the past five months despite receiving timely payment from Tangedco, said a CITU-backed union leader.

“We were not paid wages for the past five months. Our repeated requests to the agency to pay the backlog wages have failed to elicit proper response. We are not sure how long we can work without getting the salary,” said a telephone operator, on condition of anonymity. The operator alleged that the agency continues to claim the money from Tangedco without paying their wages. “We want Tangedco to intervene to get our wages settled without any further delay,” the worker said. Each worker would get a monthly pay of about Rs 5,000.

A trade union leader said their union had taken up the issue of non payment of wages by the  contractor with Tangedco. “If the wages are not paid, the workers will quit the job. This will affect consumers registering complaints.

Already, an  FOC at Tondiarpet faces manpower shortage after three persons manning it quit the job,” the union leader said alleging that the contractor had failed to appoint as many operators required to run the FOC.