Staff Reporter
SAHIBABAD: A series of extended power supply cuts over the past few days have left residents of Shalimar Garden in Ghaziabad district fuming. According to many residents of the colony, the duration of power cuts has been increasing sharply over the weeks.
“Though the electric supply has been erratic over the last month, it has become worse over the last 15 days,” said a local resident, Ajay Sharma. “In fact, over 12 hours from this past Thursday night to Friday morning we got only two hours of electricity,” adds Poonam Gupta
Apart from suffering sleepless nights, the residents are facing associated problems of water shortage and disturbance in their children’s study routine at home. “The electrical engineers of the Uttar Pradesh State Electricity Board (UPSEB) have placed the blame squarely on a power transmission problem but the fact is that they are diverting the power supply meant for us to the industrial areas situated around Shalimar Garden to earn more money,” charged Mr. Sharma.
Former Councillor of Sahibabad, Pappu Pehelwan, said he believes overloading and transformer collapse are the major reasons for these power cuts. “Also, electricity theft in our area and adjoining areas of Rajinder Nagar, Gagan Vihar, Krishna Nagar has been an open secret for the past many years,” he said
The Residents’ Welfare Association of Shalimar Garden has sprung into action and complained to the District Magistrate. Shalimar Garden Extension-II Residents’ Welfare Association president Anil Sharma said: “Despite our sending numerous letters to the District Magistrate, no effort has been made by the Power Department to put an end to our misery. In fact, whenever we go to his office we only find locked doors and are unable to meet any officials.”
“We have been getting only 10 hours of power supply a day for the last one month and the timings for these are not fixed too. The Government rooster rule of allowing only six hours of power cuts is not being followed by the authorities concerned,” he added. He demanded the restoration of power for 20 hours a day along with a notification of the four scheduled hours when electricity won’t be provided.
Denying the allegations, UPSEB Executive Engineer Pratap Bhan said: “Power supply has been adversely affected in areas of Rajinder Nagar, Mohan Nagar and Shalimar Garden for the past two days. The main problem is that the Mohan Nagar sub-station that provides power to around 2,000 consumers in these areas is experiencing overloading. Our team is working on finding a solution to improve the situation and we should be able to restore normal power supply to these areas in two days.”
“Though we try to notify the residents about fixed hours for power cuts, sometimes due to a local level breakdown we are rendered helpless,” he said .
Denying allegations of Electricity Department officials diverting power to industrial areas and encouraging electricity theft, Mr. Bhan claimed that this was not true. “We are supplying industrial units with only their scheduled quota of power. Our department also conducted a raid campaign to rein in the theft of electricity in our areas. But we have not found any major thefts,” he added.
