Darkness prevails in South Andaman
Sarthak Kanjilal
Port Blair, Apr 23: Power crisis in South Andaman region in deepening day by day as the Administration remains awfully over-promised and grossly under-delivered.
When last month hundreds of people protested against the indiscriminate power cuts the Administration had promised to minimize the power cut by March 2012 and end the power crisis for every by July 2012.
Even after one month the situation remains horribly critical. Earlier there were power cuts for only 2 hours a day but now the Electricity Department cuts power nearly four hours a day. Even after publication of a schedule the department never follows the schedules. In day time Islanders suffers load shedding four to five times a day while in night house two to three times.
When Contacted the Executive Engineer of Electricity Department, Er. R P Singh today said that the duration of power cut was increased from 45 minutes to one hour because there was a fire accident in Chatham Power House and department was forced to shut down a 2.5 MW DG set.
“We called an engineer from Delhi and 22nd April he repaired the DG Set,” Er. Singh told Andaman Sheekha today. From today the duration has been revised from one hour to 45 minutes.
Regarding delay in installation of six 1 MW DG Sets of “New Bharat”, which was promised by the Principal Secretary Power last month, the Executive Engineer said that as New Bharat could not set up the DG sets on time, a liquidity damage of .5 % has been slapped on the company.
“They were supposed to install DG sets by 8th March but they couldn’t do that hence we will impose penalty. That’s what we can do,” Mr. Singh added.
He said that till now the New Bharat could install DG set no: 1, in which voltage has already been built up. The company have started DG set no: 2, the DG 3 is in testing, DG Set 4 and 5 still need to be installed and DG set 6 hasn’t reached Port Blair yet.
Later talking to Andaman Sheekha Mr. Abbas Fodkar from New Bharat said that the delay is due to problems in shipping the DG Sets.
“DG Set 1,2,3 are in testing. All these DG sets will be installed within 3 days. We have received a letter from the administration regarding ‘agreement penalty act’. But because we are busy with the set up thing we have no idea about the amount of penalty. We will look into this after the set up works are over,” Mr. Fodkar added.
General Public can only hope that this time the Electricity Department will be able to keep promise and stop these load-shedding for ever.
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