CHENNAI: Humid summer nights for residents in Avadi and Pattabiram have been worse due to incessant power cuts during the nights, iced with the apathy of officials in the zone.
“For the last three days, power outage has been happening for long hours and especially during the dead of the night. Officials responsible are not even available to let us know what the issue is or when it will be resolved,” said Roy Rozario, general secretary, People’s Voice and a resident of Pattabiram.
Another resident T. Sadagopan added that near Hindu College, a line high-tension line from Avadi keeps tripping which causes a majority of outages. Nothing has been done over the years to resolve the issue, he said.
A chief engineer from the area to whom Deccan Chronicle spoke said the tripping has been fixed and there won’t be outages again.
Sadagopan added that no officers are available during night to look into issues. So if a bigger incident or catastrophe happens, there is no one to reach out to.
“The FOC (fuse-of call centre) number is kept busy as soon an outage happens, and assistant and divisional engineers are not available on phones,” he said.
Residents say that while FOC number is unavailable, and officials don’t respond when reached on their CUG numbers, they find it troublesome to report the incident or get it fixed in short periods of time.
“What is the use of officials being given CUG numbers when they are not available for a response,” questioned Rozario. He added that for several years, same issues have bugged residents. A number of lorries kept parked near the Food Corporation of India building in Pattabiram keep ramming into poles causing frequent power outages but nothing has been done so far.
A common complaint that residents have is to extend the benefit of the 1912 help line for power related complaints to areas in Kancheepuram and Tiruvallur districts.
“The number is currently available for areas under Chennai. Kancheepuram and Tiruvallur districts are thickly populated and are growing further but such facilities are not being extended to the residents in such areas,” Sadagopan said. Officials from the state electricity board were not available for a comment.
