Team Herald
PANJIM: The Electricity department on Friday said they had taken up measures to deal with issues related to power supply this monsoon season.
Department officials said that while the reasons for power outages were manifold, pre-monsoon maintenance, including tree pruning, was carried out despite heated arguments among consumers not allowing trees to be pruned.
Cases of uprooting of trees, insulator punctures, conductors snapping and breaking of poles were still reported due to heavy lightning.
“This was despite carrying out regular tree pruning as a part of pre-monsoon maintenance well before the onset of rains. Many of the coconut leaves, especially in coastal area sagged again on the line at some places and shutdowns were availed once again for pruning the branches as precautionary measures to avoid faults due to touching of such tree branches and coconut leaves,” said a department official.
The department said bunched cabling and underground cabling would help resolve interruption of power supply due to multiple feeder breakdown.
“These factors cannot be achieved without sufficient funds at our disposal and has to be planned in a phased manner. The cost involved for total underground cabling of 11KV feeders is around Rs 20,000 crore,” the official said.
The department would set up of a system with a 24×7 call centre having 1912 as a dedicated number to attend to the complaints of the consumers.
“The system of monitoring and attending complaints has been receiving people support and appreciation to a great extent. All the complaints which are received in the call centre are immediately relayed to the concerned Junior Engineer and the line staff of that particular area. The complaints are also forwarded to the office of the Minister of Power, Secretary (Power) and Chief Electrical Engineer for further screening in understanding and resolving repeated complaints,” said the department.
