Hard times: Tiracol battles 14-hour power cuts a day

PANAJI: Villagers in Tiracol have been battling 14-hour-long power cuts for the past few days which has affected water supply and thrown their normal life out of gear.
Midnight power cuts have become a regular feature in the village that draws power from Maharashtra. The power outage at 10.30pm on Saturday night was restored only 14 hours later, at noon on Sunday. After two hours of power, residents were left in the dark again, with no assurance when supply would be restored. In fact, the villagers spent a larger part of Sunday sans power supply.

“We live in a concrete house with no air conditioner, so it’s very difficult for us and our children to sleep at night. We can’t even open the windows because of the mosquitoes,” a resident said, adding that his wife irons the children’s school uniforms during the bouts of electricity that the village has been receiving.

The village has also not received water supply over the weekend. A housewife said the long power cuts not only hamper cooking but makes it a labourious affair. “Instead of the kitchen grinder, I have to resort to grinding everything on the stone. As we don’t have our own well, I have to also walk and draw water manually from the nearby well. We also use a drum and fill up rainwater,” she told TOI.

“Water is pumped by an employee from PWD during office hours. If power supply is restored at night, no water is pumped,” a resident said.

Goa electricity department officials say power problems in Tiracol are often due to issues at Maharashtra’s end. There’s not much load on the Goa electricity department’s transformer in Tiracol and there are hardly any issues with it, a department staff said.

In the past, residents would have to wait until a linesman crossed the ferry from Querim to attend to localized power problems. The department now has a linesman posted at Tiracol, but he doesn’t stay in the village. “He can only attend to calls till around 7pm. After that, he has to leave to catch the ferry to return home. He can’t take the risk and wait for the last ferry as sometimes there is strong current or low tide due to which ferry rides are cancelled,” a resident told TOI.

“There are boys in the village who have done electrical courses. The government should employ them on a temporary basis,” the resident added. In the event of a major problem, the department does send its staff at night via the Kiranpani bridge, an official said.

The Goa electricity department is often left in the dark about problems with electricity supply at Maharashtra’s end, forcing Tiracol panchayat member Francis Rodrigues to travel to Maharashtra on Sunday evening to get firsthand information on the problem.

He told TOI there was no clarity on when the recurring power problems would come to an end. The department planned to provide power supply to the village via the Tiracol bridge, but its construction has been pending before the National Green Tribunal for the past few years.