Khanyar protests unscheduled power cuts

Our Correspondent

Srinagar, December 21

Residents of Khanyar today lodged their protest against unscheduled power cuts in their locality. The locals also alleged that the power transformer in the area often stops working due to overload.

Residents in both metered and non-metered areas have been protesting against unscheduled power cuts for the past some weeks. In Srinagar, many parts of the city are metered, but the frequent load shedding has added to the problems of people who are struggling to return to normal life following the devastating floods.

Residents of Aqalmeer Khanyar said they had been facing frequent power cuts for the past two weeks. “Unscheduled power cuts have increased in the past one week. We are facing hard time, despite protesting and continuously bringing the problem to the notice of officials. The problem is worsening day by day,” said Ashraf Ahmad, a protesting resident.

Many locals said the transformer in the Aqalmeer locality was overloaded because of which it gets frequently damaged. They said despite appealing to the authorities concerned to provide another transformer so that it could share the load, nothing had been done so far.

Chief Engineer of the Power Development Department (PDD) Bashir Ahmad, however, blamed residents for thefts and waste of electricity, which has led to increase in load.

He said, “We supply more power to people than mentioned in their agreements. We have provided transformers in old city of more capacity than the agreement of people, but people are misusing it and a single family is using more than 5 kV. If they use it according to their agreement then there won’t be any problem,” said Ahmad.