Fault booking/rectification system not up to the mark Kuldip Bhatia Ludhiana, September 13 Persistently sultry weather conditions. coupled with erratic power supply in some parts of the city, has made the life of residents miserable. To further compound the situation, the fault booking and rectification system of Punjab State Power Corporation Limited (PSPCL) is, more or less, found wanting when needed the most. Residents of worst affected areas maintain that hardly any day passed when power supply was not disrupted, and at times, it took anything from half an hour to a couple of hours or even more for restoration of supply. “The worst part is that the customer care or complaint booking numbers (1912) mostly remain unattended, or at best, if somebody is able to book a complaint, it has to be vigorously followed up to get the fault rectified and power supply restored,” says Onkar Singh, a shopkeeper in Jamalpur Colony. Residents of Police Colony, located in the vicinity of Jamalpur (Sector 33 on Chandigarh Road), said frequent breakdowns in power supply were due to inadequate distribution system (transformers and PVC cable network). “Power supply in the colony playing hide and seek has become a routine affair. On Thursday night, supply was disrupted due to fault in transformer which kept most residents of the colony awake till late in the night. Even for a blown fuse to be mended which takes a few minutes, the residents have to wait for hours together in adverse weather conditions, especially during the night,” said a resident, Parkash Chand. It is not that only the residents in areas on the periphery or in the old city that suffer due to the erratic power supply, even their counterparts in so-called ‘well-developed and posh’ areas were not much better placed. Residents of the Civil Lines area alleged that power failure for a couple of times for duration of a few minutes to anything like an hour or even two-three hours, had become a regular feature. “On Thursday, supply was shut down in the morning for well over an hour and a half which deprived the people from water supply in the morning. The power supply was again disrupted around 9 pm which was finally restored after nearly three hours with a few interruptions in between,” said Manav, a resident of Bank Street near Kailash Cinema. Residents of a few localities in Haibowal, such as Jassian Road and Durgapuri, also maintained that the areas were problematic with regard to power supply which continued to play hide and seek on almost a daily basis. Residents of a few other localities complain that even though the weather conditions remained extremely hot and oppressively humid, the PSPCL had resumed taking shutdowns for six to eight hours for maintenance works which was uncalled for.

Stay updated with all the Latest Ludhiana headlines here. For more exclusive & live news updates from all around India, stay connected with NYOOOZ.