CEB worker attendance during protest to be considered in restructuring : Minister

Power and Energy Minister Kanchana Wijesekera has warned that the attendance of CEB workers during Wednesday’s trade union action would be taken into account in the restructuring process of the Electricity Board.

He said about 40 per cent of the staff had reported sick or were absent on Wednesday.

The highest number were absent from the Corporate Strategy section where 67.9 per cent or 87 persons of the 128 were absent.

The details of the absent figures are; Chairman’s branch and Branches coming under the General Manager – 34.6 per cent absent (97 of 280 absent), Asset management section – 23.5 per cent absent (117 of 498 absent),  Distribution Division 1 – absent 46.7 per cent (2003 absent of 4286) , Distribution Division -2 – absent 43.6 per cent (absent 2276 of 5225), Distribution Division 3- absent 41.5 per cent (1487 absent from 3583) , Distribution Division 4- absent 46.4 per cent (absent 1350 from 2908) , Generation Section – absent 31.4 per cent (absent 964 from 3074), Projects 19.2 per cent (absent 102 from 531), Transmissions wired – absent 17.4 per cent (absent 283 from 1629), Transmission non wired – absent 53.4 per cent (absent 103 from 193) and Finance absent 52.8 per cent (absent 71 from 125)

Accordingly the total absent was 39.9 per cent or 8,940 from 22,460.

Mr Wijesekera in a twitter message said “CEB officials attendance was at 60% during the protests that was held yesterday. While some services was not available to the public, It could be one indicator to take into account in restructuring the numbers needed to operate CEB to have an uninterrupted supply of power.”