After 12-hour power cut, Noida industrialists approach discom

Peeved with frequent power cuts affecting their production, representatives of industrialists who own units in sectors 6 and 7 submitted a memorandum to Uttar Pradesh Power Corporation Ltd executive engineer Pankaj Goyal on Tuesday, demanding uninterrupted power supply.

Peeved with frequent power cuts affecting their production, representatives of industrialists who own units in sectors 6 and 7 submitted a memorandum to Uttar Pradesh Power Corporation Ltd (UPPCL) executive engineer Pankaj Goyal on Tuesday, demanding uninterrupted power supply.

Industrialists said they are suffering high production costs as they are using generator sets for electricity. (Sunil Ghosh/HT File Photo)

They have also written to UPPCL managing director Abhishek Prakash, seeking his urgent intervention in the matter.

Over 300 industrial units located in the two sectors faced a power cut from midnight on Monday to 11 am on Tuesday, affecting their production the next day.

The entrepreneurs said UPPCL’s claims of providing uninterrupted electricity supply have been falling apart since May this year. They added that UPPCL engineers blame the Noida authority for damaging electricity cables and for lack of transformers.

“The last eight days have been painful. We have lost three working days (in eight hour shifts) due to power cuts since July 25. Power cuts affect production badly and we have to use generator sets that cost us three to four times the UPPCL tariff. This affects our cost of production badly,” said Kishor Kumar, an entrepreneur in Sector 6.

“Most industrial units in sectors 6 and 7 produce material for export. The power cuts hamper their production, affecting delivery schedule. We pay our clients penalty for late delivery and are incurring losses not for our fault, but due to erratic power supply by UPPCL,” said HK Gautam, managing director, Gautam Princer Fabrication Private Limited.

Goyal said that the recent 12-hour power cut was due to the underground electricity cable being damaged during drain cleaning work last week by a Noida authority-appointed sanitation contractor. “We have lodged a police complaint in this regard too. In the meantime, we have put an overhead electricity cable to supply electricity to the sectors and hope the situation will be normal by Wednesday,” said Goyal, adding that he had held a discussion with a senior authority official seeking coordination between the two government agencies for better work.

After Tuesday’s meeting with UPPCL, the Noida Entrepreneurs’ Association (NEA), which represents 8,000 industrial units in the city, formed a WhatsApp group of five entrepreneurs and five senior UPPCL officials to redress the issue.