John Wilbert & Rabindranath Biswas
Port Blair, Nov 10: The entire Shaheed Dweep has been witnessing nearly three to four hours long rotational power cuts for the last 05 days in the area, and that is causing immense hardship to people of the region.
As per report, because of the power cut, there was no power supply to mobile towers
and hence there was no mobile or internet network for the last four days in
the entire region.
Talking to Andaman Sheekha Daily, a few Tour operators said that, “Tourism sector of Shaheed Dweep has been severely affected due to the worsening power crisis and power cuts in the island.” Post pandemic, the sector is going to see its most vulnerable phase of time now as a sizable numbers of tourists are returning back from the island with a bad image due to the power uncertainty while hotels owners are using generators which run on diesel and are facing the same wrath of power cut, they alleged.
“Because of power cut we can’t serve our customers, hotel occupancy/booking in the island has fallen massively and if this situation lingers on, after knowing the situation, the influx of tourists may avoid to come to our islands and as a result, the tourism industry is going to sustain a massive financial loss due to this power cut.” They lamented.
Mr. Kajal Das, Mondal President BJP said that “Electricity Department entered an agreement with a Delhi based company for outsourcing and managing the affair of an uninterrupted power supply in the island. But the company reportedly failed to supply power satisfactorily to the consumers of the island,” he alleged. Consequently, local villagers and tourists are facing the undesired inconveniences due to non-availability power supply/erratic power supply, he further said.
On the other hand, recently Shaheed dweep is witnessing a good tourist footfall for the last couple of months but the power outages are causing a lot of distress to the tourists, especially at budget and mid-segment hotels, people engaged in the business rued.
The high-end hotels may have power backup but the budget hotels are crippled with the problems of power cuts. “Terrible and unfavourable experiences in the island by the travellers is sending a wrong message and is damaging the reputation of the tourism industry here, as claimed by a tour agent.
When contacted, a senior officer of the Electricity Department told Andaman Sheekha that an agreement was signed by an outsourcing Company named Express Engineers of Delhi and the Electricity Department and the company is maintaining the generators and power supply in Shaheed Dweep.
There are four generators Shaheed Dweep- of them two are of 750 KVA and one is of 500 KVA and the other one is of 250KVA. Of these, the 500KVA generator is under repair since last several months and the 750 KVA generator got repaired on 08 Nov 2022 and due to this reason, only two DG Sets- 750KVA and 250 KVA were in working condition which were insufficient to supply an uninterrupted power supply in Shaheed Dweep.
The Electricity Department has already apprised the company Express Engineers of the issue and asked to start the repair works and set DG sets right as soon as possible so as to eliminate the power cut problems in the island, the Officer further said.
