Energy Secretary N. Srikant has directed the power utilities and their employees to ensure uninterrupted supply to the hospitals and COVID care and vaccination centres, which are grappling with the second wave of the pandemic.
In a review meeting on Sunday, Mr. Srikant said the focus should be on the hospitals where a large number of COVID-19 patients were undergoing treatment, and hundreds of them were on ventilators. These hospitals had around 4,000 ventilators, he said.
“The State also has more than 500 Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana - empanelled hospitals serving the COVID-19 patients,” he said.
Power supply to all these hospitals should have no interruptions, he made it clear.
The APEPDCL, APSPDCL, and APCPDCL are supplying 9.20 MU, 6.80 MU and 1.24 MU per annum respectively to the hospitals, including COVID Care Centres.
Due to outbreak of the pandemic last financial year, revenues from the industrial and commercial sectors had dwindled, he said. “But the government has come to the rescue of the power utilities, which have incurred a loss of around ₹4,300 crore in the form of subsidy to the tune of ₹17,904 crore in 2019-20,” he said.
The power utilities should continuously monitor the operation of distribution transformers and the maintenance activities as per the check-list to avoid inconvenience to the consumers.
While calling upon the employees, mainly the field staff, to rise to the occasion, Mr. Srikant advised them to take precautions to save themselves from the pandemic.
