PRINCE KUMAR
Ranchi, April 10: Festivals bring joy to the society but the disruption of power supply during summer festivities such as Sarhul and Ram Navami due to processions, a large section of people gets affected in the state.
Six years after the then Jharkhand Chief Minister Raghubar Das launched an underground power distribution system project in half a dozen districts including Ranchi, people are far away from getting benefit from it.
However, the people residing in East Sighbhum under the Tata Steel command area will get uninterrupted power supply but other than that areas in the district where JBVNL provides power supply have suffer due to the absence of an underground power distribution system.
During a rough survey across the district, the common people of Ranchi shared different challenges that they face due to the interruption of the power supply during the festivals, especially in the summer season.
Abhishek Kumar, a resident of Harmu who is working in a sales company said, “Though my home is equipped with an emergency power supply system, still the battery won’t survive for 8 hours long for which the supply would be disrupted. Moreover, I have to complete the assignments of my company which needs an uninterrupted power supply.”
Another resident of Argora said that in this scorching heat it is nearly next to impossible to survive without a fan or air conditioner. “The state government is never concerned about the problems of the common people. I have spent nearly two and half years in Kolkata and in a very rare case power supply was disrupted for not more than 30 minutes,” he added.
A Retired SBI Bank manager residing in Ashok Nagar said that the condition of the power system in Jharkhand is very poor. “Though the fact cannot be ignored that the power supply is disrupted keeping in mind the safety and security of the people, the government should have completed the underground power distribution system as done in several cities of the country,” he added.
PK Srivastava, general manager cum Chief Engineer of Ranchi said that the underground power distribution system which started in 2016 has not been completed due to the absence of funds.
“Nearly 70% work has been completed in delivering power from the Grid to the substations and 20% work has been completed in delivering power from substations to the transformers. Moreover, only 3000 km of LT wire laying is left,” he added.
On the question of people have to suffer due to power cuts in the city during festivals he said that keeping safety in mind the power supply is disrupted in certain areas. Safety is the foremost priority because of which the power supply is disrupted for a certain period so that no misfortunate incident takes place which happened in Palamu nearly 25 years back.
If the underground power distribution system project is successfully implemented, narrow roads and by lanes, each covered by electric poles and wires not only jam the air and ground space, shortening their width, but also cause short circuits and contain fluctuating loads, will get widened and look clean.
