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Balewadi-Baner residents face frequent power cuts, MSEDCL blames smart city project
Residents of Balewadi and Baner have been facing constant power failures of more than eight hours for the past week
Residents of Balewadi and Baner have been facing constant power failures of more than eight hours for the past week. The power cuts have directly affected professionals with work from home duties, and students having online classes.
According to the Maharashtra State Electricity Distribution Company Limited (MSEDCL), the power cuts are a result of damaged lines during road digging.
A number of complaints were registered at the Maharashtra State Electricity Distribution Company Limited (MSEDCL), however, there has been no reprieve from power cuts.
“This has become a recurring theme for people who are living in Balewadi and it has become a bane of our life to find ourselves in darkness four to five times in a week,” said Vijay Varasgaonkar, resident who is fed up of the consistent power outages.
“We are suffering for the past eight to 10 years as there is no proper planning when it comes to making a proper duct for the repairs to be conducted. Every now and then, the road is dug up and every time it is us who suffer. There should be a proper duct for allowing MSECDL or any other user to make repairs and not dig up the newly laid roads,” he said.
Dheeraj Bangad, who lives in Regency Cosmos on Baner road experienced being in the dark for more than eight hours during the week.
“The officials have been digging up the road under the name of smart city project and accidently hit / damaged the electrical lines. We have been in the dark for more than eight hours, then the electricity came around for an hour around 2 am, only to be gone again for another six hours. After constant complaining, we got to know that the people working on this project damaged the lines. I find that there is no coordination among the authorities and we are suffering because of them,” said Bangad.
According to the residents, who have begun their own way of recording the number of complaints via social media said that cables have been damaged three times but the MSEDCL team is busy in attending the fault one after another. This damage of cables due to indiscriminate digging should stop.
The residents have also made it a norm to question the authorities whether power supply will be intermittent whole day before they begin planning their day.
“We communicate with the smart city officials daily and inform them to work diligently around the cables even the officers are cooperating and together we also do site inspections but those working at ground level create a problem and sometimes in a day, they are damaged in three to four sites along Baner-Balewadi. We are in fact asking to write to smart city officials about this ongoing,” said MSEDCL executive engineer on the condition of anonymity.
“During excavation, there are no markings on the cables and sometimes they are accidently damaged, if it is damaged, we immediately rectify it, nobody does it deliberately and we penalize the contractors,” said a smart city official.
