'Power surplus' Gurugram faces long outages
Gurugram: On paper, it is officially stated that Gurugram is power surplus city. Moreover through centrally funded programme of Smart Grid project, there are also plans to ensure that there is 24-hour power supply to the Millennium City. Ground situation, however, is completely different as lakhs of residents are subjected to long power outages.
Saturday's thunderstorms and heavy rain left large parts of Gurugram without power for more than five to ten hours. For residents who are already accustomed to such long hours of power cut, Saturday proved to be a tipping point and even upper middle class locality like DLF Phase-III, residents came on road to protest about the abysmal state of power infrastructure.
On its part, the state electricity board has claimed that Gurugram has no shortage of power. However, local factors like dysfunctional transformers caused due to extreme power load or extreme weather conditions are causing power cuts. There have also been claims that the developers in the private colonies have also not revamped their power infrastructure owing to the heavy demand.
The state electricity board has not renewed the contract with the private company of maintaining the subdivisions that used to transmit power to over two lakh residents. Outages, on Saturday, was attributed to the fact that there was heavy burden of responsibility in already understaffed electricity board officials to maintain these power points.
Unable to meet the heavy load of power consumption, the power infrastructure in the city has collapsed again. Most of the areas are facing power outages of average three to six hours minimum. Such has been the situation that in times when there have been thunderstorms most of the areas have been without electricity for more than 12 hours.
Most of the residents have got used to inverters, diesel generators or worse candlelights. However, failure of the state run electricity department yet again has resulted in open expression of disappointment and anger over poor infrastructure at the public forum. Areas that were adversely affected included Sushant Lok, South City, DLF Phase-III Palam Vihar and sectors of New Gurugram. Most of the angry residents took to the social media to vent their ire.
"What is the use of boasting about a power surplus Haryana when large parts of its most progressive city is still running on generators," read one of the angry reactions on social media after the long power cuts. Even as the electricity board officials claim that all the burnt cables have been rectified, residents do not seem to be satisfied with the claim and expressed their concern on the preparation of the electricity department officials in the impending monsoon.
"Whether it is summers or monsoon each time there are power crisis in the city. Even though we pay a high amount of Rs 8 per unit we still have to face the power crisis every year. Imagine the plight of residents who have to pay a high amount for their power bill as well as for generator bills," said Arti Singh a city resident.
