‘Outages for 7 hours’ in Gurugram: Residents hold candle light march

GURUGRAM: Agitated over frequent unscheduled power cuts for the past few months, residents of various group housing societies in sectors 79, 78 and 79 took out a candlelight march against the discom on Sunday.
Around 80 residents, including women and children from around seven housing societies participated in the march. The area has been witnessing outages for around 50 times a day, a resident alleged, adding that they face outages for 5-7 hours daily. This is forcing us to rely on gensets, for which developers are charging us Rs 30-36 per unit, he said.
“DHBVN has completely failed to provide continuous power supply in sectors 77, 78 and 79. There are 40-50 tripping daily. The developers are exploiting the situation and charging us Rs. 36 per unit for DG power supply. In such a situation, we were left with no option but to protest,” said Dhirendra Kumar Singh who participated in the march.
Gulshan Kukreja, another resident, said, “As the government and DHBVN have failed to provide us 24x7 power supply as committed, we are forced to pay an additional cost of Rs. 7,000-8,000 per family a month additional to the builder for power backup. This is not only burning hole in our pockets but also contributing to pollution.”
Several residents also claimed that frequent cuts and switching to the discom supply to the power back multiple times are damaging electrical appliances. “We have also been facing a low voltage problem. Despite paying taxes, we are being deprived of basic amenities,” Kaushal Pandya, a resident, said.
When contacted, Manoj Yadav, superintending engineer-I of DHBVN refuted the claims, saying there is no shortage of power supply to the area.