Legal heirs of deceased Tangedco staff await jobs

Chennai: Over 40 legal heirs of the deceased Tangedco workers are awaiting employment on compassionate  grounds, but  their files are “gathering dust” in the office of the Superintending Engineer (SE), North Chennai for the past few years.

The family members of the deceased employees have threatened to stage a protest in front of the Tangedco headquarters on Anna Salai, if they were not given the appointment order   immediately.

The electricity board provides job on compassionate ground to a qualified legal heir of its worker dying in the harness. “In the North Chennai SE office, the file of over 40 persons, who had applied for jobs on compassionate grounds, had got stuck without taking  any action on it. The families of those who had applied for the job are facing a severe financial crisis,” said a leader of the Central Organisationof Tamil Nadu Electricity Employees in North Chennai.

He alleges that an official who was in charge of processing those files was inordinately delaying it for “some other” consideration. As per the norms, the legal heir of the deceased worker on the harness should apply for the job within three years of the worker’s death. After they applied for the job, the additional engineer of local Tangedco office would do a fieldenquiry  and the report would be submitted to the SE’s office.

“Even after completion of field enquiry, many of the legal heir’s job application files got stagnated in the SE’s office,” he complained.

One of the people awaiting a job told DC that it was more than nine months since the additional engineer completed the mandatory field report after he applied for a job. “I did not receive any communication after that. When I enquired last month, I was told that the file was in the SE’s office,” he said, adding that after his father’s death in 2014, his family is entirely dependent on the pension to meet its financial needs.

A Tangedco official in North Chennai SE office admitted that there was a delay in processing the files as the person in charge had some health issue and did not clear it.

“We received complaints from the union, after that we took measures to clear the files. We are holding weekly review meetings on the issue and cleared over 80 per cent of the files. In a week or two, we will process all the applications,” the official said.