Neeraj Bagga

Tribune News Service

Amritsar, July 4

Erratic power supply is troubling one and all — be it rural consumers, industrial or urban dwellers alike.

The situation of power availability in rural areas is quite grim. Farmers with standing crops have no other option but to switch over to costly diesel-run generators, jacking up their input cost. Jagbir Singh, 53, a resident of Fatehpur Rajputan village, said power was snapped in residential and agriculture areas on Saturday and supply was yet to be restored in some of the areas.

PSPCL splits rural areas into two separate entities — Agriculture Power Line (APL), which supplies power to fields and Urban Power Supply (UPS), which is for inhabited areas in villages.

The feeder at Fatehpur Rajputan, through its 40 transformers, supplies power to Chappa, Nabipur, Othiyan and some other villages but it has two employees to look after such a vast paraphernalia, Jagbir pointed out. He said there was no supply issues before the sowing of paddy on June 10. Thereafter, the scenario kept deteriorating.

Dinesh Gupta, area SDO, said PSPCL staff was on job to plug loopholes and rectify damaged parts after the storm late on Friday. He said those villages which did not get stipulated power supply of eight hours a day would be given 16 hours supply in a day to make up for the loss.

Harpreet Singh, 36, of Chohan village, said fields in his area were not getting more than 4-hour supply a day. His village receives power supply from the power feeder at Khinda village, which also supplies power to Malowal, Jabowal, Jodhnagri, Talwandi, Kheda, Khalchiyan, Muchchal, Balia, Takhtuchakk, Chajjalwadi and Thattiyan villages by rotation.

He said farmers were compelled to run diesel generators for hours to make up for the loss. At Rs90 per litre diesel and high labour cost, the input cost has increased manifold. Power supply scenario to inhabited villages is equally gloomy. Most of the villages were getting power supply 10 to 14 hours every day in the Jandiala area.

Industrialists rue 72-hour long power outage

The PSPCL enforced a 72-hour long power outage for large-scale units having power load above 100 kw from Sunday 8 am till 8 am on July 7. Earlier, the industry was not subjected to long power cuts.

Kamal Dalmia, adviser to the Punjab State Electricity Regulatory Commission who operates a large-scale unit, pointed this out as a discriminatory move for the border zone industries. He said the north and centre zones were subjected to 48-hour long power cuts. He suggested that to tide over the crisis, the state-run Power Corporation must procure power from those states that have surplus electricity through power grid and resume operations of the stalled thermal power plants at the earliest. “This is another blow to the industry after the Covid-19 pandemic, which we are yet to recover from.”

Skattar Singh Dhillon, chief engineer, PSPCL, blamed delay in the arrival of monsoon, intensification of heat wave and surge in the demand of power by both domestic and rural consumers for upsetting the balance of supply and demand, leading to the present power crisis.

Citizens harried in urban areas as well

Power supply is playing hide-and-seek in urban areas as well. Brief periods of power outages ranging between 10 and 30 minutes are erratically enforced in different areas of the city. Pawan Sharma of posh Ranjit Avenue said power cuts were unheard of after the state was declared power surplus during the SAD-BJP coalition government. Now, all of a sudden residents were subjected to long power cuts. He said when the power supply is less, there is a need to prioritise the supply chain.