12-hour power cut leaves Zirakpur residents fuming

Satinder Pal Singh

Zirakpur, June 8

Residents of several localities and housing societies here today were forced to spend around 12 hours without electricity supply. The residents alleged that the power tripped around 9 am and could only be restored around 8:45 pm today.

The residents complained that the outage affected the water supply in their locality. Inverters installed in houses and shops also stopped working. People were left with no other option but to wait for the resumption of power supply.

Power complaint centre was also flooded with inquiry calls by consumers. People alleged that they did not get proper response from the complaint centre. Despite making numerous calls to the complaint centre, they failed to get a satisfactory reply.

K Kapoor, a former bank employee, said the power cut threw normal life out of gear. No work could be done for the entire day.

Ankur Grover, a resident, said: “With rising temperature, it turned out to be a nightmare for us as standby arrangements like inverters also gave up. People had to bear the scorching heat throughout the day. Evening water supply was also disrupted.”

A housewife said: “It was a bad start to the day with neither power nor water in the house. Power outage affected the household work badly. Water taps also went dry.”

Raman, a shopkeeper, said: “Business was affected due to the power outage. Our business runs mainly on computer, but batteries did not last after 2 pm.”

Some residents said on other days too, unscheduled power cuts continued to make their lives miserable.

Kulwinder Singh, XEN, Zirakpur, said the work on double circuit transmission lines for 66kV station was in progress. The board had intimated consumers about the power cut.