PONDA: Mardol locals on Tuesday gheraoed Executive Engineer Deepak Naik, at Curti Electricity Department for one hour and grilled him with several questions over failure of the department to find out solutions to the problems faced since past one year despite several reminders by the locals.
The locals comprising a team of politicians, doctor, journalist and electrical engineer were furious over the recent high voltage power incident causing fire to one house and incurring heavy losses due to damages of electrical appliances.
If you enjoyed reading this article, you can help support our journalism by adding OHeraldo as a preferred source.
The locals fear that if the high voltage power issue is not solved immediately, it may prove risky to their lives. They demanded safety for their lives and property along with quality and normal voltage power supply.
They also demanded separate transformers for the industrial estate and domestic consumers so that high voltage meant for the industries is not supplied to the domestic consumers.
The EE Naik gave various reasons including short circuit, more consumption and old equipment that might be causes for power fluctuations including more consumption of power and use of more electrical gadgets by the consumers.
However, the team of locals who had conducted detailed study refused to buy the reasons given by the EE and were furious.
The team said instead of finding a solution, the EE was rejecting the claim that it was mistake of the Electricity Department.
Zilla Panchayat member Damodar Naik said, “Besides high voltage, at least 10 to 15 times in day power failures occur and also no single streetlight is functioning.”
The locals also demanded that the old transformers should be replaced.
Finally, the locals including Zilla Panchayat member Naik put forward their demand in writing that they want separate transformers in their area, one meant for the industrial estate and another for domestic consumers.
The locals also met Superintendent Engineer Stephen Fernandes, who had luckily arrived at the Curti office.
Fernandes after hearing the locals’ grievances patiently said that after a proper study of the problem with the engineers and locals a solution would be found out.
