For more than 60 continuous hours, people from societies in Baner-Balewadi area, model clusters for the country’s Smart Cities Mission, were back in the dark ages, living without any power.It was restored on Tuesday at 3.30pm after the breaker faults were corrected and 15 transformers repaired.
The rain was to blame, but Maharashtra State Electricity Distribution Company (MSEDCL) staff did precious little to restore power quickly and its operators, attending to hundreds of calls, were of little or no help.
The company’s statement on Monday night blamed faults in the underground cables and said once addressed, electricity was restored. But residents of many societies reached out to TOI stating that their woes were far from over.Twitter too was crackling with angry comments from residents across the city with their friends from Thane and Mumbai joining them.
Power supply to the 644 flats in Comfort Zone in Balewadi was restored by 3.30pm on Tuesday . Tarun Chaturvedi, a residents, said, “I have a six-monthold baby . Many youngsters went to the malls, or to their friends over the weekend, but we struggled. No appliance worked. Electricity had been cut off since early Sunday .“
The society’s chairman Vikas Kamat said they have their own feeder pillar and a transformer room. “ After fixing the fault in the tower outside, the electricity went off again. The MSEDCL officials have been working in the rain. Moisture had crept into the circuit breaker causing the outage,“ he added. Kamat said the builder had not protect the high-tension lines within the transformer room from wet weather.
While large societies had generators to back up supply for at least the common areas and lights and fans to work in homes, smaller societies were not so lucky .
The generator at Thorve Vishwa, with 32 flats, stopped after 24 hours. “We could hear children cry the entire night and people could not open their doors and windows because of the mosquitoes. The lifts were inoperational too. There was just no information from the MSEDCL. My office is in the same building and no work was done in the past two days as computers, printers and the lights are not working,“ advocate Pandurang Thorve said.
People bought many packets of candles which were being sold at inflated rates.
Younger people from areas like Wakad went out early to charge their cellphones and use the internet for work.Aman Srivastava, an IT professional and a resident of Kalpataru Harmony in Wakad, said they had no electricity since Saturday . It was back only on Monday . “The cellphone is crucial and we went to office even on the weekend for some relief.Many residents went jogging at 4am as they could not sleep,“ he added.
Kharadi residents get support
At the other end of the city, idents of Kharadi were the residents of Kharadi were the first to agitate. About 75 people protested outside the local MSEDCL’s office on Monday night.
A seven-member delegation of the 4,500-member Kharadi Housing Societies’ Welfare Association, Pune on Tuesday handed over a letter to executive engineer of Ahmednagar Road division Kishor Patil who suggested a new sub-station for the area.
“There were water problems due to pumps not working, basic appliances not working. Repeated phone calls are unanswered and when the city is on the threshold to become a smart city , such issues should be resolved once and for all,“ it said.
Patil said the existing feed to Kharadi comes from 9km away . “Much of it is through overhead power lines which are most susceptible in incessant rainfall. A tree falling on the lines can disrupt the entire connection and there is no back-feed. We will give residents of Kharadi access to part of the switching sub-station coming up at Marvel Zephyr in the area as the back-feed. The sub-station will be commissioned after tests within a month,“ he added.
Power outage had left thousands of Kharadi residents without supply for close to 30 hours. Patil said high moisture led to a short circuit in the ring main unit at the World Trade Center, a commercial premises which took a long time to detect and rectify .
Gera North, Saturn Brick, Kumar Primrose, Gulmohar Queenstown, and Urban Nirvana residential societies had experienced power outage of 18 hours on Saturday , and a little over 11hours on Sunday . “We had no water supply as the pumps to fill the overhead tanks could not be operated,“ Kunal Ranjan from Saturn Brick told TOI.
Nitin Memane of Gera North said the elderly could not go down or climb up to their homes as the elevators were not working. “With no power, water purifiers could not be used. Our dependence on water tankers ensured there was no drinking water at home,“ he said.
Diesel consumption was high at these societies. Deepak Patil from Gulmohar Queenstown saif they had spent Rs 6,000 a day on diesel for generators. It went up to Rs 24,000 for fuelling generators at Gera North.
Source : TOI
