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Power remains hit in U.P.’s Prayagraj as admin ups efforts to help consumers
District magistrate, Sanjay Kumar Khatri also held a meeting with the officials of the power department and contractors during the day
People in both urban and rural areas of the district continued to face electricity and water problems on the second day of the 72-hour strike of state’s power department employees even as the Prayagraj district administration stepped up efforts to rope in the support of the electricity department contractors to help the consumers on Saturday.
District magistrate, Sanjay Kumar Khatri also held a meeting with the officials of the power department and contractors during the day. In the meeting, it was decided to rope in support of the private sector to rectify the faults of sub-stations and power lines.
Also, he inspected several power sub-stations on Friday night and on Saturday and took stock of the situation. Meanwhile, power supply to various localities of Sangam city was disrupted. Its repercussions also affected normal business in Sangam city markets.
People in many areas, including densely populated old city area of Kareli, Mansarovar crossing, Allahpur, Rambagh and Chakia, protested. It took police and district officials hours to convince them to end their protest. Due to power outages, supply of potable water was also affected in the city.
Residents of Kareli, Govindpur, Jhalwa, Jhunsi, Church Lane, Katra, Teliyarganj, Kydganj and Leader Road areas were deprived of electricity and water since Friday night. The power supply from Karelabagh sub-centre was affected due to a fault at Karelabagh sub-station which receives power from the 133 KV line coming from Rewa Road.
Electricity was disrupted for long hours in different localities of the city. In posh Civil Lines area, power supply was disrupted from 10am to 6pm on Saturday. Due to this, locals were deprived of even drinking water as there are almost no handpump in the area.
“Power was down in my locality since morning because of which there was severe problem of water and power back-up at my house. Things became more problematic as I have school going kids,” said Preeti Gupta, a resident of Civil Lines.
In the rural areas, the four feeders of Naribari, Devra, Kheri, Jarkhori power sub-stations at Gaura have remained affected since the start of the strike. After shutting down of the power supply, people in the area are facing several problems including that of water. They are pooling money to hire generators to extract drinking water from borewells.
Meanwhile, the demand of inverters and batteries has suddenly increased. Those who have the stock of the batteries have even increased the rates. The district administration has shared a list of mobile numbers of the people to be contacted when there is power failure. However, as these numbers are of the power department contractors, they are not able to resolve the problems of everyone.
“Now that the people have got our number, they are troubling us by calling again and again even for the electric faults in their homes. Moreover, as my team is not aware of the power lines and the connections from the substation, we are not able to help much”, said one of the contractors whose number has been shared by the district administration.
However, like Friday, there was no fault in the transmission line of the power department. Power in the district is transmitted through a network of transmission line which include 400/132 KVA transmission line coming from Meja, 220 KVA power station at Rewa Road and New Cantt, and four sub-stations (each of 132 KVA) at Teliyarganj, Minto Park, Old Power House and Kareli.
“The transmission was not affected because of the strike as it was only the distribution part which was affected,” said executive engineer (transmission), LN Chaturvedi. As the district administration had deployed police at most of the sub-stations and power houses, there were no reports of any untoward incident or vandalism from anywhere.
