Leaving people to suffer from power outage, Minister of Power-Cuts & PDD brigade go in hiding
Jammu Tawi, June 6: Are these summers unusually hot and the power outages really outrageous or is it that our tolerance and expectation levels have changed? While it cannot be denied that God and the Government have jointly and severally chosen to deliver some unkind power cuts to residents and non-residents in Jammu region, pointing a finger at those abstract beings makes little sense.
Thirty four electric poles have fallen down from last Friday to this Tuesday due to torrential rains and heavy winds in Sainik Colony, Chhanni Himmat, Nagrota.
Entire city was plunged in darkness and people were left to sweat while no respite was seen forthcoming even after 18 hours.
While the scheduled and unscheduled power cuts are the order of the day, the Power development department has miserably failed to restore the much needed electricity. While waiting for the power to restore, exhausting of Inverters and Power Backups has added to the woes of people that rendered them workless and useless.
While entire Jammu city, without any exception of a locality, suffered the power outage to its worst, with their tolerance spilling over, some people in various localities like Chhani Himmat today came on streets in anger protesting against the power outage and raised slogans against the Dy Chief Minister Dr. Nirmal Singh and their local MLA Kavinder Gupta. Unfortunately, people of Jammu who are well skilled in physical street-protests have now switched over to social media to pour in their anger and fancy comments, being an easier mode. They are not at fault as those stalwarts who used to prompt and provoke them even on flimsy grounds had boarded the bus to Civil Secretariat leaving the hapless people leaderless.
That Jammu Kashmir has vanished is now obvious as no respite is given to the people who have been spending nightmarish nights cursing Dr. Nirmal Singh, the Minister of Power-Cuts and his ‘Army of Engineers' who have gone into hiding to save their skin from the public wrath. They have become inaccessible to consumers and the media alike. However, Simrandeep Singh, Deputy Commissioner, Jammu shared on social media stating, “The storm has affected power supply in most areas of Jammu. Teams have been deployed from Wednesday morning to carry out repairs. Power supply will be restored soon.”
The Northlines, in its issue dated July 4, has already exposed the inside story of Re-structured Accelerated Power Development and Reform Program (R-APDRP), which is a flagship programme of the government with a total outlay of over Rs 50,000 crore.
As claimed, RAPDRP will further help the Jammu and Kashmir government reduce AT&C losses, outages and interruptions, thereby increasing consumer satisfaction. Even if the official claims are to be believed, the tall claims of the state government over ensuring better electricity supply to the people are set to fall flat as the Power Ministry in JK is going to miss the deadline of March 2016 for the implementation of the much hyped R-APDRP program for the state.
A retired chief engineer of PDD, requesting anonymity has raised a question mark over the quality and the logic behind installing RCC (Reinforced Concrete Cement) electricity poles instead of steel poles on roadsides in view of recent incident falling over three dozen Electric Poles loaded with over four hundred Kilograms weight of distribution-oil-transformer with iron angled platform etc. This could have taken toll on human lives and huge property loss.
He said that PDD should consider the accident as a warning as most of the RCC poles do not meet the required standards.” He explained that ideally the RCC poles should have steel rods running across their entire length to impart strength to the pole.
“Instead of using steel rods, a thin wired mesh is used in these poles. So technically these are not proper RCC poles,” he said, adding that many such broken poles can be spotted in the city.
He said if instead of using these RCC poles, steel poles are used, they would not break up. “The steel poles can be bent if a large force is applied but they would not break. The steel poles are much safer in city areas because there would be no chances of them killing people,” he said.
He said a strength test of the RCC poles being used by PDD should be conducted by some independent agency.
He said a thorough probe should be done and the incident of falling poles must be investigated. Inspection into the manufacturing of these poles by the authorities concerned is also required to allay doubts about the safety aspect being blatantly compromised by vested interests, if any.
Our urge for basic amenities to VVIPs splurge is unlikely to abate. Ministers and Legislators have courted lifestyles that are unsustainable both economically and socially; they have lost all sense of fair proportion and public good.
But on the other hand, politicians and the powerful have made the country uninhabitable for ordinary mortals. But all such ranting, legitimate as they may be, does not however exonerate us, the people. It can be taken as truism that no bad thing can happen to us without we, ourselves contributing liberally to the kitty of woes. That the people get their government they deserve.
