Instead of rectifying faults, Electricity plays denial card
Sheekha Bureau
Port Blair, Feb 07: The Electricity Department has developed a fine strategy to avoid questions raised by local media and the strategy is to release rejoinders with lame excuses and incomplete facts, which are far from truth. Instead of treating the disease, it seems, that the department is only worried about suppressing the symptoms.
This is shocking to note that yet another electrocution of an employee of electricity department has not opened the eyes of authorities. Instead of taking stern action and taking precautionary measures the electricity department has come up with a rejoinder in Government’s Daily newspaper to mislead the Administration.
Electrocution of Habil Tirkey is not the first such incident. Earlier due to sheer negligence of Electricity Department on 27th December 2009 Bonifas Ekka suffered electrocution and he lost both his hands, Last month a Mazdoor suffered electrocution at Mayabunder, on 14 June 2011 Shoaib a 11 years old boy of Bambooflat was electrocuted, on 31st October 2010 Mr. Umapathy had died due to electrocution infront of Pay and Accounts Office Port Blair. If documents are checked there will be many more such incidents, which went unnoticed but till now the electricity department has not fixed responsibility on any one in any above case and no action taken report was shared with media.
While talking to Andaman Sheekha on Friday, Mr. R P Singh, the Executive Engineer of Electricity Department had said that “I agree this is a mistake” but in official clarification the department has refuted the news, which is enough to show that efforts are on to downplay the incident.
If everything is in order in Electricity Department then the Superintending Engineer of Electricity Department must clarify that why so many staffs of the electricity department and general public are getting electrocuted? Where the system has gone? Why every year two or three such incidents are reported from these Islands? Who should be held responsible for this?
Simply holding the employees responsible for this accident won’t work as the employees are supposed to follow the orders of officers and if the officers are unable to keep the employees under control, the officers must have courage to shoulder the responsibilities for these accidents.
Andaman Sheekha had earlier reported that how most of the transformers are kept without fencing in these Islands and after that news and following the direction of the Lt. Governor the Electricity Department has now put proper fencing around most of the transformers. Sadly some of the transformers are still left without fencing, about which Andaman Sheekha had reported two weeks back.
It seems that the clarification of the department is far away from facts and because of lack of proper supervision from the top officers the entire system of electricity has gone wrong.
As per the new trend the responsibility of every department after any accident ends with a clarification in Government’s Daily and after which no precautionary or preventive steps are taken by the Department and the Lt. Governor and Chief Secretary must discourage departments from doing so.
