Gas supply disruption leaves 20,000 Kandivali East residents struggling throughout the day

Approximately 20,000 residents in Kandivali East, including the Lokhandwala Township with over 50 buildings and 10,000 flats, endured a full-day gas supply outage due to emergency maintenance work on a gas supply pipeline

Mumbai: Approximately 20,000 residents in Kandivali East, including the Lokhandwala Township with over 50 buildings and 10,000 flats, endured a full-day gas supply outage due to emergency maintenance work on a gas supply pipeline. The disruption lasted for almost 12 hours - from 7am to 5pm and to later.

Gas supply disruption leaves 20,000 Kandivali East residents struggling throughout the day

A Mahanagar Gas Limited (MGL) spokesperson said,“Our emergency team was alerted by a gas smell on Akurli Road, near Growel’s Mall, and we had to temporarily stop the gas supply as a safety precaution to carry out the rectification work.” She added that an SMS had been sent to the customers informing them of the same, but some residents from the Lokhandwala Township claimed not to have received them.

Apurva Rajan, a technology business analyst, who lives with elderly parents and two school-going children aged 3 and 4, was thrown in a tizzy, “To pack my children’s lunch, I had to ask my neighbors if they had a toaster or sandwich maker they could spare and we rushed to get it. They were late by 40 minutes, and my wife was late for work by an hour. My elderly parents cannot eat out, so for lunch, I had to attempt to make dal and rice in the microwave. Even for tea, I had to go down to the local dhaba and stand in a line for 20 minutes. Even lifts took long, as many delivery workers were coming in and going out.”

While gas supply restoration began in phases from 5pm, residents voiced concerns about the lack of information on the cause of the emergency. Local authorities and citizens, led by Santy Shetty of We All Connect (wAc), claimed the pipeline was affected due to the work of a subway under the Western Express Highway (WEH) in Kandivali, MGL refused to divulge any information about what caused the emergency.

“The work on the subway earlier had a deadline for December 2023, but it has been extended to May 2024. What we want to know is when it will get done, and what authorities are doing to avoid such incidents in the future,” said Shetty.

This is the third gas supply disruption in the city within three months, following two incidents in Dahisar in December. The disruptions included pipeline damage during excavation work and heavy machinery-related incidents, leading to arrests in the latter case.