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| Power breakdown mercury dips but city residents still face heat | | |
Jammu, June 15
For several lakh people residing in old city area and its adjoining areas, including Gandhi Nagar Trikuta Nagar, Sainik Colony ,Channi Himmat, Greater Kailash,RoopNagar,Muthi,Janipur,Shakti Nagar,TalabTillo, even a breeze or a drizzle is a cause of deep worry for them.The drizzle does not inundate the posh areas but it snaps the power supply lines.The fallout, delay in supply of fresh water.
Ask any resident facing the heat in the absence of power during night he will volunteer airing his grief over prolonged power breakdown and shutdown. On Wednesday and Thursday nights people were heard roaring with anger when they suffered the miseries of a 10-hour breakdown.It was not a power cut but breakdown caused by tottering trees that pulled down supply lines in some areas and uprooted poles which were as weak as that of the ruling coalition.
Replies to one’s queries on the reason for prolonged power breakdown from engineers
of the Power Development Department appear to be a tutored one “you can have either tress or electricity,both cannot coexist.”One engineer candidly said “we do not receive adequate funds for carrying out regular maintenance of transmission lines.”He gives another reason for the shutdowm “as a result of overloading we switch off the supply to avoid damage to the transformers.” He is right.Even replaced transformers have lesser capacity than the demand.And he again expresses helplessness when asked why transformers were not installed after examining the demand of each area.
On other occasions the reason for the shutdown is shortage of electricity.But the distraught people fail to explain why Jammu and Kashmir has been pooling into the northern grid pool some quota of surplus electricity during the summer months for export to Chattisgarh state.In return Chattisgarh state has assured Jammu and Kashmir that during the winter months,when the demand for power goes down,it would export power.The reason for export of power to Chattisgarh was to lessen the financial burden under which Jammu and Kashmir has been reeling because of heavy buying from the Northern grid.
And in the absence of any concrete measures for improving the power scenario in the state the Government consoles people by dishing out repeated statements in which it claims that Jammu and Kashmir has a potential of generating 20,000 MWs of electricity.It is silent on the measures it proposed to take for tapping the potential.Successive state Governments swindled or wasted money on unimaginative plans.In late seventies the state cleared 22 micro hydel projects in the state and till date not more than two such projects have been commissioned. Experts have said that since the state Government had insufficient funds for these projects it resorted to unimaginative planning.It released meager funds for civil works which would get washed away either by floods or by heavy snow because these works were not completed.
The only thing the state Government has taken care of was to have scores of chief engineers,superintending and executive engineers. One incharge of maintenance,another for generation, the third one for designs. And during the last three decades not more than 600 MWs of electricity have been added to the pre-partition level.This excludes Salal but includes Uri project
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