Power shut down of 7 hours pushes citizens to inconvenience

Lokmat News Network

Aurangabad, May 21:

The power shut down of seven long hours undertaken by the Maharashtra State Electricity Distribution Company Limited (MSEDCL) to implement pre-monsoon maintenance drive, today paralysed the water supply in the city during the daytime.

MSEDCL has implemented the shut down on Friday and Saturday from 10 am to 5 pm. The discontinuation of power supply to the AMC’s elevated storage reservoirs (ESRs) in Shahgunj, Jinsi, Kranti Chowk and Hanuman Tekdi discouraged the Aurangabad Municipal Corporation (AMC) from supplying water to nearly half of the city areas expecting water in their taps as per the rotational schedule. Due to absence of power supply the AMC was unable to transport and store water in the above ESRs. However, the AMC claimed of supplying water to the dependents on the above ESRs in the evening hours.

The AMC executive engineer (water supply) Hemant Kolhe said,”The ESRs were not filled during the daytime due to power shut down by MSEDCL. However, the lifting and storing of water in ESRs started from the evening and the aim was to supply water late in the evening.”

According to MSEDCL sources, the drive has to implemented before the onset of the monsoon. We had asked AMC when to implement the shut down. They prevented us from implementing shut down during the last week. The implementation has been done as per their convenience. To avoid inconvenience to consumers due to disruption of power supply in monsoon, we have trimmed or cut the branches or twigs of the trees falling on the cables supplying power, repaired old and bursted insulators, checked the existence of oil in the transformers, sealed the oil leakages in transformers, replacement of old or damaged lightening arrestors etc.