Call for PNG Power to withdraw letters to staff

National

THE PNG Energy Workers Association has called on the board and management of PNG Power Limited to withdraw the warning and termination letters to employees who had
participated in a sit-in protest last week.
Union general secretary Santee Margis told The National that it was unbecoming of the management team to be issuing letters to employees when the union and the board were in the process of reaching amicable solutions to their outstanding grievances.
“We have come to the stages of discussion whereby the PNG Energy Workers Association has provided documents and the memorandum of understanding (MoU) signed by the union executives and the PNG Power managemen,” Margis said.
“It was the same MOU that the PPL board chairman has been relying on which had superseded the MoU by the Department of Labour and Industrial Relations which the management would have been implementing and settling those outstanding workplace grievances.
“PNG Power board and management had continued to be completely ignorant and lost so we provided them the documents and in good faith the MOU was signed by the chairman of the meeting, Vali Mai and PNGEWA president Eddie Gisa.
“We have called for the management to rescind and withdraw the warning and termination letters by today (last Friday) or we resort to sit-in protest stop work as an indication of no confidence in the board and management.”
Meanwhile, the PNG Power management had refuted claims of the citywide black out in NCD last Thursday as being related to the sit-in protest by the workers.
The management said in a media statement that there was a total power system outage on Thursday morning caused by a problem at the Kone substation.