SLFP union boss slams govt over wages and electricity

Leslie Devendra-April 28, 2013

By Harischandra Gunaratna

Sri Lanka Nidahas Sevaka Sangamaya General Secretary Leslie Devendra yesterday said that the government should pay a ‘living wage’ to the workers as the purchasing power of current wages was little or nothing and the masses had been pushed from the frying pan to the fire.

The Sri Lanka Nidahas Sevaka Sangamaya is a trade union affiliated to the SLFP.

Addressing an SLFP news conference, at the Mahaweli Centre, Colombo, on the forthcoming May Day, he said that this year’s May Day rally at Campbell Park will be one with many challenges.

"It has come to a stage where the trade unions have to change their stance in dealing with the current crises," Devendra said.

He alleged that there was a ‘mafia’ in the Ceylon Electricity Board, who were calling the shots and were mainly responsible for the hike "Though the government has launched a number of development projects, we don’t agree with it in the manner in which the electricity tariff hike was handled," he said adding that the government should order those whose electricity bills exceed over one million rupees per month to install their own solar power generation unit at their own expenses," he said.

"We need a long-term solution to the current electricity crisis and the answer is to switch to solar power generation," the veteran trade unionist stressed.

Devendra vehemently criticised the government‘s pricing mechanism in increasing the electricity tariff and added that it was a severe burden on the common masses. He said those with a very high consumption of electricity were not touched at all by the new mechanism which was grossly unfair and unjustifiable.

"A person who uses around 120 units of electricity has to pay around Rs 1,000 more today and it is a heavy burden on a man whose salary is about Rs 15,000," he said.

Devendra said that the proposed amendment to section 39 of the Wages Ordinance, which would make it illegal for any company to employ labour, or sub-contract work which formed a part of the core business of a company, was yet to be implemented though it had been submitted to the Cabinet.

"There are hundreds of thousands who have been employed by various companies and not made permanent and don’t receive EPF, ETF and gratuity while working for very low salaries. Some have worked for periods as long as seven or eight years without being made permanent and some are hired and fired at the will of the employer after more than seven or eight years thus violating their rights," he said.

If the amendment to the above mentioned bill is effected, those employees could fight for their rights, Devendra said.

Responding to a query as to what action the government would take against the ‘mafia’ existing within the CEB, Labour Minister Gamini Lokuge said that the only mafia he knew in the CEB were those who had not made an attempt to change into alternative methods from diesel power generation.