M F AHMAD
Daltonganj, June 15: Medinirai Medical College Hospital at Pokhraha in Daltonganj is plagued with electricity woes.
It is languishing from low voltage due to which the college management has arranged power supply through one heavy generator set which entails 35 litres of diesel for only 3 hours supply of the electricity a day, cost of which is being born by the medical college management.
Principal of MMCH Dr Shailendra Kumar said, “We had to go for this costly alternative power supply to keep our Covid testing lab functioning as low voltage has affected the efficacy of the RT-PCR machine, auto extractor machine and master mixing machine.”
“We on an average test 1,000 to 1,500 samples a day for Covid but due to the low voltage, our precious testing tools for Covid test make us lag behind our target,” he added.
The low voltage causes spoiling of the samples of the swab also and thus testing job gets delayed. It causes a repeat of the Covid test as relevant machines for the Covid test just drop down because of erratic voltage.
Low voltage has also caused enormous inconveniences to the MBBS students. Rimsha Wasim is a second-year MBBS student at this college, said her semester examination is on and this low voltage has doubled her problems.
According to Rimsha, MBBS students study late at night and prepare hard for their exams, but power outages in the morning ruin their day.
Another first-year MBBS student Sripiryadarshini also curses low voltage as it slows down the speed of their fans in this hot and humid weather.
Sripriyadarshini further said low voltage has affected the functioning of the colour intensity machine called Colorimeter in the biochemistry lab also.
According to sources, Principal Dr Shailendra Kumar is quite concerned about this low voltage issue at the college. He is said to have spoken to the officials of the electricity department and Palamu DC about this problem but in vain.
Lagatar24.com spoke to the general manager cum chief engineer Sanjay Kumar of the electricity department in Daltonganj last night to know why the medical college has this problem of low voltage and what help his department can lend to the college.
Sanjay Kumar said, “This medical college will have to set up its own power substation on its campus to have a flawless power supply all through.”
“We are not to set up this power substation. Let this medical college do it with its own resources and then we will provide them with the necessary linkage,” Sanjay added.
He further said, “Our department has given this college a 33 KV electricity line. This is a high tension (HT) line. This has to be further converted into low tension (LT) wire.
The power sub station backed by a 500 KVA transformer will tide over this problem by converting this 33 KVA into 440 volts.
General manager cum chief engineer further said, “We believe we were just asked for 33 KVA line and that we stretched it to them as there was no asking from us for the power sub station there on this campus of the medical college and so we can’t do anything about it.”
According to Sanjay, the problem of earthing arises in acute summer. “We advise the medical college to get its wiring and other things like earthing checked to find out if there is any fault that can be rectified.”
He said, “We are supplying power to the O2 (medical oxygen) plant and we have not come across any problem arising out of the low voltage there.”
