E-Paper
Bleeding woman carried down 11 floors after power cut in Pune
The power supply was cut due to bill non-payment of a slum rehabilitation authority scheme building in Pune
PUNE: A blame game has started between residents of a slum rehabilitation authority (SRA) scheme building and the Maharashtra State Electricity Distributor Company Limited (MSEDCL) after a woman - bleeding from a miscarriage in the eighth month of her pregnancy - had to be manually carried down from the eleventh floor of the building on Friday night after the MSEDCL cut off power due to non-payment of bills for several months.
According to residents of the SRA society, the MSEDCL employees kept the power shut even after being informed about the presence of many pregnant women in the building. Whereas MSEDCL employees claim that they turned the electricity back on within 10 to 15 minutes of learning about the bleeding woman having to be carried down manually despite the bills of the society running into Rs6 to 7 lakh.
Sachin Mujumale, member of the SRA society and worker at a social organisation called Madat Pratishthan, said, “We get a common bill for the entire building for electricity- and water- usage. The society management kept changing so we could not pay the bill but we managed to clear Rs4 lakh worth of bills while bills to the tune of Rs3 to 3.5 lakh were remaining to be paid. I have a recording of a call I made to a MSEDCL employee, pleading with him for an extension of one week as there are many pregnant women in the building but he did not listen.”
However the MSEDCL official Mujumale was referring to said that he got a call from another person who explained the situation and promised to get a cheque of Rs1 lakh payable towards the society’s bill on Saturday morning.
Sayas Sopanrao Darade, executive engineer, Parvati division, MSEDCL, said, “I turned on the electricity within minutes of the call by Nilesh Chavan from the society. We are not monsters. For the sake of humanity, we did not shut the power of 60 private home meters in the building even though some of them have bills worth Rs50,000 pending.”
“They have been getting reminders for several months but neither the residents, builders nor the government have responded to our warnings. We were told to cut-off power supply for pending bills of more than Rs1 lakh which we did. But Pune is now under pressure as there are around 1 lakh people who have not paid their bills and the state government has directed us not to collect from places such as Sangli, Kolhapur and Ratnagiri due to the floods,” Darade said.
Purva Jadhav – who started bleeding on Friday night while she was with her elderly mother-in-law - had to be manually carried down from the eleventh floor of the 13-storeyed building. She was put in a rickshaw at around 10.40pm and taken to Godbole hospital from where she was ferried to Deenanath Mangeshkar hospital in an ambulance. Calls and messages to Dr Dhananjay Kelkar, medical director, Deenanath Mangeshkar hospital, went unanswered on Saturday.
