Engineers’ bodies blame ‘poor planning’ for U.P. power crisis

Power engineers’ bodies have blamed ‘poor planning’ for the current power crisis in Uttar Pradesh, demanding the government to act on suggestions as made by them to improve the situation. In a letter to energy minister AK Sharma, the UP Rajya Vidyut Parishad Abhiyanta Sangh on Monday said the number of consumers and the amount of sanctioned power load had just tripped and doubled respectively in last 10 years without corresponding modernisation and strengthening of the power infrastructure.

“All the system strengthening works in cities were carried out 10 years ago under the Centre’s APDRP and the R-APDRP schemes and around 50% of the transformers installed then are overloaded now and can go phut anytime. As many as 60% of the faults in the local LT lines happen because insulations in the bunch cables laid under the APDRP scheme have now burnt in most cases,” Abhiyanta Sangh general secretary Jitendra Singh Gurjar said in the letter.

He further said there was an acute shortage of essential material and manpower required to maintain the power supply. “All the 36,000 vacant posts in various energy corporations should be filled immediately. The work to enhance capacity of transformers should be carried out in a planned way and pending proposals should be approved at the earliest, financial powers should be given to divisions to carry out maintenance and repair work and revamped distribution sector scheme should be expedited,” he suggested.

UP Rajya Vidyut Parishad Junior Engineer Sangathan patron flagged similar issues in his letter to chief minister Yogi Adityanath. “Arbitrary decisions and unnecessary penal actions against employees by the management are largely responsible for the current power crisis in the state,” Satnam Singh alleged in the letter, demanding, among other things, decentralisation of administrative and financial powers in the department to get desired results.

Singh also attributed what he termed an unprecedented increase in power consumers and “drastic reduction in the number of power department employees” for the present crisis. UP Rajya Vidyut Upbhokta Parishad chairman Avdhesh Kumar Verma, in the meantime, approached the UP Electricity Regulatory Commission (UPERC), complaining about the UPPCL’s 1912 service not responding well to consumers complaints. “When complaints are not being registered, how can consumers claim compensation for a default in any service?” he questioned.