PSPCL employees far from being ‘alert’

Kuldip Bhatia

Ludhiana, September 24

Even after the Punjab Government declared ‘red alert’ in the wake of moderate to heavy rain - continuing across the state from Saturday and the impending threat of floods – the field staff as well as the supervisory officials of the Punjab State Power Corporation Limited (PSPCL) were not found at the desired level of preparedness during a surprise check conducted by Chief Engineer of Central Zone, PSPCL, Paramjit Singh, in some parts of the city and Khanna town on Sunday.

The Chief Engineer visited the Focal Point sub-division, where it came to light that adequate maintenance staff was not available to attend to the line faults and other complaints. Since most of the work for rectification of faults has been outsourced to private contractors, even the supervisor deployed by the contractor did not know the exact number of employees put on the field duty to attend to faults.

“Further, contractual employees were found to be without uniforms and identity cards – a mandatory requirement as per the terms and conditions of the contract,” said Paramjit Singh. He took strong exception to the setting up of a private office a little away from the PSPCL Focal Point sub-divisional office, which was ordered to be closed forthwith.

Some aggrieved consumers present at the Focal Point sub-division office told the Chief Engineer that the mechanism put in place by the power utility for the booking and rectification of faults left much to be desired and it was far from being ‘consumer-friendly’. They said the booking of faults at the PSPCL call centre of complaint offices, in itself, was a Herculean task. As if to add to the misery of suffering consumers, many a times, the employees concerned mark the complaints as ‘resolved’ without attending to them

“Strict instructions have been issued to regular employees and supervisory officers of PSPCL to accord top priority to the rectification of line faults and other snag causing disruption in power supply. The field staff and officials have also been directed to remain fully prepared to meet any emergency during the red alert period,” he said.

Meanwhile, due to incessant rain during the last three days, power supply continued to play hide and seek and nearly 100 feeders were disturbed on Saturday and Sunday causing huge inconvenience to people in various localities across the city. In some affected areas, people had to go without power supply from Saturday night till late evening on Sunday.

PSPCL officials, however, claimed that as of now, the power supply in most of the affected areas was normal.