If the ongoing Ramzan month has brought days of unwavering religiosity for devout Muslims and epicurean cheer for the gourmands around the city, it has also brought furrows of worry onto the brows of APCPDCL officials.
With lengthy power cuts having been scheduled even during monsoons this year, the officials are facing a peculiar situation wherein they can neither deny power during the holiest period of the year for Muslims, nor offer uninterrupted supply.
Kiran’s directive
With the Chief Minister directing the power distribution officials to see that there are no power interruptions in old city, at least during Namaz hours, the company officials are now conducting brainstorming sessions to work out a solution.
While the Namaz hours are between 5 a.m. and 10 p.m., the hours of scheduled power cuts are spread along the day from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. In all, there are eight slots of outages of one-and-a-half hour duration each, with areas under each substation brought under one slot in the morning and one post noon.
Now, the whole arrangement requires to be reworked so that the areas in the old city are kept out of the schedule during prayer hours. It is quite a task for the officials, considering that the South Circle of Metro Zone has nearly 30 substations catering to almost entire old city.
Added with the few areas that come under the Central Circle, the number would go up further.
With presence of major mosques in all areas catered to by the substations, the company finds itself in an unenviable position.
While public address system is an obvious necessity, the need to run fans and other equipment during prayers is inevitable for the mosques, as they have to accommodate large congregations during Ramzan.
Difficult situation
“It will be a tight-rope walk for us to work out a solution without forcing back-to-back power cuts on other areas. We also have the obligatory responsibility of supplying to government offices, water pumping stations, hospitals and other such public utilities during specific hours of the day,” confides an official.
However, the Chief General Manager of the CPDCL Metro Zone A.G. Satish Kumar said major revamps were not on the cards as of now.
“So far we have not received any complaint from the old city, the residents of which are more or less used to the existing schedules. However, we will try to consider any individual request for exemption during specific hours,” he said.
