As power cut time extends, city bizmen blow their fuse

Ludhiana: An extended power cut in several mix-land-use areas and the zone of micro and small enterprises due to maintenance on Wednesday infuriated the local businessmen, who asked Punjab State Power Corporation Limited (PSPCL) for sufficient supply to the factories.
On Thursday as well, the power supply to MLU areas such as Kakowal Road, Noorwala Road, Kali Sadak, Kailash Nagar, Rahon Road, and Sundar Nagar is expected to be suspended for maintenance. Not willing to take it, the local businessmen have advised the PSPCL to carry out maintenance once the power situation in the state had normalised.

Janta Nagar Small Scale Manufacturers Association president Jaswinder Thukral said: “Six to eight hours of power cut every other day is not tolerable, even if enforced in the name of maintenance. The factories in Madhopuri, Rahon Road, Kakowal, and Noorwala Road will stall tomorrow as well.”
He said: “PSPCL should avoid the maintenance at a time when the factories already have their power supply curtailed. It is our request to the power corporation to postpone this maintenance activity as long as the state’s thermal power stations were stocking coal to normalise their operations.”
Inputs about problems in reporting outage forced the PSPCL to issue several other helpline numbers for receiving the complaints. A PSPCL spokesman said: “Ludhiana central zone chief engineer Harjit Singh Gill has released a list of numbers other than 1912 for the consumers to file their supply-related complaints.” Gill said: “In unavoidable situations such as heavy rainfall accompanied by dust and windstorm, when the power supply gets disrupted and the complaint call traffic shoots up, it congests the telephone network. So if your call to 1912 doesn’t connect, you can try the other numbers of use the PSPCL’s consumer services’ mobile application.”
The spokesperson also said: “The consumers can know the status of their complaint on SMS (short messaging service) by sending a text to 1800-180-1512.
The alternative numbers were released for all divisions and control rooms.