CEB engineers pump diesel into their vehicles from Kelanitissa stores

No queue travail for the lucky few

By Ifham Nizam

While many other state-sector professionals including medical specialists and other health workers are spending days and nights in fuel queues, engineers of the Ceylon Electricity Board are not feeling the pinch thanks to the government giving priority to supplying fuel for power generation, a senior Power and Energy Ministry official said.

Despite everyone else undergoing untold hardships trying to find fuel, CEB engineers have been happily tapping into the large diesel stocks at the Kelanitissa power plant to top up their fuel tanks, we reliably learn.

An official said: “Ironically, CEB has no rupees to pay CPC even when the Treasury scrapes the bottom of the barrel to find the dollars to pay for fuel imports. Therefore, CEB is forced to get short-term loans from commercial banks at exorbitant interest rates, generally above 30%, to pay for its fuel and monthly salaries and generous allowances of its employees.”

Several CEB employees contacted by The Island including veteran trade unionist Ranjan Jayalal were of the view that it is criminal for the CEB to use diesel supplied by the government for power generation to pump fuel into engineers’ vehicles.

Such supplies are often made at the cost of depriving other critical needs such as public transport, school vans, and the haulage fleet bringing daily essentials like fish and vegetables to urban centers. But some of the power generation fuel is used to maintain the lifestyle of a set of privileged state employees.According to these CEB employees, long lines of CEB vehicles used by engineers have become a common sight at the Kelanitissa power station. These vehicles often carry barrels and other containers to take additional diesel supplies.

These employees complain that although diesel is issued from the Kelanitissa storage under the guise of supplying the essential needs of maintenance and breakdown vehicles, only a small fraction of that fuel is allocated to CEB’s field vehicles.The engineers in the meantime have an almost unrestricted supply of diesel for their official and private travel (sometimes including daily travel of their spouses), despite the people agonizing in long fuel queues all over the country.

In fact, the CEB has been advising its customers that the time taken to attend to breakdown complaints will be longer because its maintenance vehicles cannot get sufficient fuel.

CEB engineers are allowed to commute between their homes and workplaces, subject to a maximum of 20 km each way plus additional private travel allowance ranging from 600-900 kilometers per month at board expense. But some engineers travel to Colombo daily from places like Wennappuwa, Negombo, Panadura, and even more distant places like Ratnapura. Apparently, the fuel shortage has not deterred these engineers from economizing on fuel use despite the current crisis thanks to diesel stocks at Kelanitissa intended for power generation.

It is understood that when the CEB General Manager recently announced that the private mileage allowance of engineers would be reduced by 50%, engineers protested vehemently. Many CEB employees question why this decision had angered the engineers so much when there is no fuel even to manage CEB’s day-to-day maintenance work in most areas.

It is also learnt that some CEB engineers who had been allocated petrol vehicles had quickly switched to diesel because of the ready availability of the fuel from the Kelanitissa storage facility.

Its employees complain that even the engineers attached to project work in the Project Division continue to clock the same mileage as before, although the project work has come to a standstill because of the foreign exchange shortage and the resulting shortage of essential materials like steel, cement as well as CEB’s inability to open LCs for essential imports of new equipment.