Residents feel the heat due to crumbling power infra

LUCKNOW: With cables bursting and transformers breaking down frequently, power infrastructure in the city seems to be crumbling under the relentless heat.

On Tuesday, residents of Hussainganj, Station Road were reeling under a power cut since 1.30 am till the time this news was written. They said LESA officials were unable to locate the cable fault for the last 16 hours.

The LESA has just four fault locators for 110 sub-stations – two of these are old ones while only two are new. When the power cut in Hussainganj was reported to the substation, the staff didn’t take the matter seriously and they started searching for the fault only in the morning, alleged residents. When fault locators were brought, the movement of vehicles had started and it became tough for the engineers to locate the fault, they said.

Avadhesh Kumar, chairman, UP Rajya Vidyut Upbhokta Parishad Verma said, “Poor planning is the main cause of crumbling infrastructure of LESA. Despite spending Rs 300 crore on maintenance, if residents have to face long power cuts in the state capital them one can think about the situation elsewhere. LESA officials have failed to address the main cause of power cuts in the city that is poor maintenance of existing infrastructure and failure to create new one.”

Over 300 transformer burnout cases have been reported during the last three months and the high incidence of such burnouts can be attributed to poor maintenance of infrastructure.

Even a VVIP area like Dalibagh witnessed a power cut from 2 am till 9 am on Tuesday due to transformer breakdown. In Bhawaniganj, a pole came down crashing which led to an outage of more than seven hours. A transformer snag also hit power supply in Madayganj for more than four hours.