South Andaman remain Powerless
Staff Correspondent
Port Blair, May 02: The Electricity Department has imposed heavy penalty to ‘New Bharat’ for delay in supplying 5 MW power to the Electricity Department as per the agreement.
“New Bharat is supposed to supply us 5 MW of power as per agreement so we have already imposed Rs. 1 lakh penalty per day,” Mr. R P Singh the Executive Engineer (HQ) of Electricity Department told Andaman Sheekha today.
As per the agreement ‘New Bharat’ was supposed to install six DG sets of 1.2 MW each and supply 5 MW of power to the Electricity Department, by now. As per plan the sixth DG set will be installed by ‘New Bharat’ as standby DG set but till now the sixth DG set didn’t reach Port Blair.
As things didn’t work as per the plan the power crisis deepened in South Andaman area, resulting in endless power cuts in Day time and regular power cuts in peak (night) hours. As the residents of South Andaman experience never ending power cut and suffer heavy financial loss, the powerless electricity department remains helpless as private players fail to perform.
“There is a mismatch between their and our systems. They have installed unit-I and put it in parallel. They have supplied nearly 700 – 800 KW of power during test from Unit-I, Unit II has also been installed successfully and Unit III will be also be tested soon. But due to mismatch in system they are not able to supply power to us. They are trying hard to fix the problem and are consulting experts in Mumbai,” Singh added.
When Andaman Sheekha asked about unscheduled power cuts during morning hours, the reply came strait. “During morning hours we carryout most of the repair and maintenance works, as during peak hour we can’t carry out any kind of repair and maintenance work and hence publishing a schedule for power cuts in the morning hour is impossible,” the Executive Engineer added.
When asked that why the Electricity Department is unable to keep promise of solving the power crisis, Singh said that at present the department can only say that if the DG Sets of New Bharat Start supplying power then power cut will be immediately reduced to just 15 minutes.
