During the last fortnight, the power supply in Cansaulim village has been very erratic with frequent outages and voltage fluctuation. This results in damage to costly domestic appliances such as TV, refrigerator, washing machines, etc.
Moreover, in view of the prevailing COVID pandemic, people have been advised to stay at home in order to prevent infection from this dreaded coronavirus. Hence, people are stocking more perishable food items such as meat, vegetables, fruits, milk, etc in their fridges to avoid frequent visits to the market.
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Such frequent power failures, therefore result in spoilage and wastage of such stored items and the very purpose of stay at home is defeated if the people are forced to go out for the purchase of these items.
When repeated attempts are made to inform the Electricity Department of the power failure in the locality, prompt come the computerised reply that the department’s phone is busy. This is a clear pointer to the fact that the department’s receiver has been kept off the hook.
The Electricity Department should realise the fact that, every household does not have an inverter. They should also understand that, in all probability, the call is being made to inform about a power failure in a locality and not for chit-chat purposes since many a time they are unaware about the occurrence of the power outage. Therefore, as public servants, they should, as a minimum courtesy, answer the calls. In rare cases, when one succeeds in somebody answering the call, the stock reply emerges “mains shutdown, failure of jumpers,” etc.
Hence, immediate replacement of essential antiquated electrical parts is the need of the hour to prevent such recurrence of power interruptions and frustration among the consumers.
The Electricity Department should wake up from its slumber and rectify on a war footing the shortfalls in power supply to the consumers, who will, in due course, be presented with big fat bills with erroneous calculations for consumption of power for the lockdown and post-lockdown period from March 2020 onwards.
