Visakhapatnam: Power supply restoration has turned out to be a farce for people in the city since local officials have not been considering online complaints regarding power woes. Moreover, they were asking the victims to register again at the sub-stations.
In fact, the EPDCL has set up a toll-free customer care service for consumers and service for cyclone victims was also included in its services. After an announcement by the senior officials regarding power woes, people started lodging their complaints at 1800 4255 5333 after the cyclone.
Many trees were uprooted destroying electric poles, power lines, transformers and later service wires for domestic connection. As part of restoration, new electric poles, transformers and conductor wires were being changed at a majority places. During the process, staff members from various places were connecting the service wires irrespective of their status.
As a result, there has been no power in many houses though power was restored. Though they registered complaints online, they were being discarded temporarily by the discom since staff was busy with restoration. An EPDCL engineer said they had opened registers at all sub-stations where people have to lodge complaints.
grievances again manually.
According to customer care staff members; they had received 3,525 complaints regarding power woes from Oct 13 in which they resolved 1123 till now. “We have to restore major disturbances at many areas and cannot focus on individual problems like service wire connections. This is not neglecting the consumer problems, but will start them in a couple of days as soon as staff members relieved from major works,” said P Ramamohan, Operations Director.
Meanwhile, the state government is now going about preparatory works for taking up underground power cable system for Vizag city and a departmental team has been deployed for preparing a preliminary report on feasibility of the proposed project which would finally be submitted to the World Bank.
Secretary of energy department Ajay Jain said they had deployed a senior official for verifying the existing infrastructure in the city limits such as number of sub-stations, lines, and other infrastructure and for clarity on the cost of the project if converted into underground cable system.
The report will be prepared within a week and reviewed for further process before sending a DPT to the World Bank for financial assistance, the senior official added.
It may be recalled that the state government had forwarded a project proposal for Rs 500 crore to the World Bank on October 6. The total power supply would would be completed by October 26 in the city and by October 30 in the rural areas.
Charging to Industrial Organizations would also be finished by Oct 22, according to Mr Jain. Apart from tribal areas, the state government is also planning to provide solar lamps for major hospitals. There are also plans to request the union government for allocation of additional power of 200 MW to meet the current demand, according to officials.
