Bengaluru: The city has grown rapidly and made strides in different fields, but people of IT City are still made to suffer from erratic power cuts.
The recent spells of rains caused long power cuts in different parts of the city, making people angry. The worst affected was the East zone, where Ramamurthy Nagar, K.R. Puram, Hennur, Banaswadi, and surrounding areas had to suffer long power cuts. Even Jayanagar, Malleswaram, Rajarajeshwari Nagar, Peenya and other areas were affected.
Mr Sunil Kumar, a resident of Ramamurthy Nagar, said, “We boast of our city’s development, but when it comes to power supply, we have a hopeless system. A slight drizzle and power is cut for four to five hours. After the Thursday’s rain, power went at 8 pm and was restored only the next day morning. It is summer season and these power cuts have made our lives miserable. When we call Bescom officials, they say it is due to feeder fault or some other failure. Why can’t they have proper maintenance and ensure that there are no such issues.”
Ms Arthi Rani from Peenya fumed and said that Bescom should be shunted out and the maintenance work should be outsourced. “Every day, power goes more than five times and it has been happening for the last two months. We cannot imagine what is going to happen during monsoon. The government should think of hiring private agencies to maintain the systems, if not we will have to suffer without power.”
Bescom officials claimed that feeder faults and transformer failures are causing power outages. “Unexpected failures cannot be prevented. Linemen and technicians are put to work immediately to ensure that power supply is restored. A few things are beyond our control.”
Mr Prabhakar from FKCCI said that there should be regular preventive maintenance which needs to be carried out to avoid power failures. “There are two types of power failures – one because preventive maintenance is not carried out, while the other is unexpected. The preventive maintenance plays a major role to ensure that the system is working and we do not think it is being done on a regular basis. While unexpected failures cannot be judged and predicted.”
He said that officials concerned should be penalised for troubling the people through these unscheduled power cuts. “Bescom should ensure that they monitor the system and send reports on the standard of performance every week,” he said.
