The Ceylon Electricity Board (CEB) joint trade union alliance is planning to launch a 24-hour- token strike from midnight today.
Ceylon Electricity Employees Union Secretary Ranjan Jayalal said that the unions will go ahead with the strike as planned as the unions have not received any favourable response to their demands.
Jayalal said that the trade unions were confident at least 22,000 of the 24,000 CEB employees will join the strike. “Even the CEB bill payment counters will come to a standstill. There won’t be anyone to do the repairs. All the maintenance workers will join the strike,” he added. Jayalal said the main demand was to rectify the salary anomalies. In addition we are urging authorities to immediately stop targeting selected employees who have fought for the rights of the workers,” he added. Jayalal said that although authorities had promised to increase the salaries of lower level workers so as to keep the gap between the management level staff and lower level staff salaries at a reasonable level they had so far failed to keep upto it.