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| Wednesday, 30 July 2003 |
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by Rashomi Silva The Ceylon Electricity Board (CEB) yesterday called off its planned islandwide strike scheduled for today after the CEB management promised to pay an advance of Rs. 15,000 of the back-dated salary arrears, a senior trade union official told the Daily News yesterday. The official speaking to the Daily News said that they had two successful meetings with Power and Energy Minister Karu Jayasuriya and the CEB chairman M. Zubair yesterday where the CEB management have agreed to pay an advance of Rs. 15,000 shortly. "We are happy with the outcome of the meeting and decided to call off the strike we had initially planned to stage from Wednesday noon to the next day and also not taking any responsibility for the black outs that might have arisen during that period," However, now we don't plan to take any such action ". A coalition of 29 trade unions had initially threatened to take strike action today and tomorrow demanding 50 per cent of the back dated-salary arrears. They had been granted with 40 per cent back dated-salary increase from the year 2000. The union coalition has also warned that if they did not get the demanded 50 per cent arrears before the end of this month, they would press for the entire arrears by August and threatened to go on a continuos strike islandwide until their demands are granted. Chairman Zubair said that the trade union representatives agreed to call off the strike but they were waiting for the official confirmation yesterday evening. Meanwhile, CEB chairman in a press release said that the CEB will have to spend over Rs 2000 million for the salary increases and with the present financial crisis the CEB is facing, it is difficult for the CEB to find such a large sum of money. |
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