By IANS,
Ghaziabad: The power scenario has worsened in Ghaziabad with city areas facing outages of up to 16 hours, while low voltage prevents alternatives like inverters from being recharged and providing respite to the residents.
Besides, outages of 18 to 22 hours are reported from semi-urban zones and industries in the district have been asked not to operate between 8 p.m. and 6 a.m.
Posh residential areas like Kaushambi, Vaishali, Raj Nagar, Kavi Nagar, Chiranjeev Vihar and Gandhi Nagar are going powerless the whole night long.
“Inverters have failed due to insufficient power and intense power fluctuations, with the supply around 100 volts while the minimum requirement is 220 volts,” complained Major (retd) Vishamber Singh, a resident of Govindpuram.
“We have to be without power throughout since our inverters are not operating due to insufficient power to charge the batteries,” said Rajiv Bhalla of the Kaushambi residents welfare association.
Power supply to district industries is also being cut for 7-9 hours in the night from 8 p.m. to 6 a.m. The industries have been “officially” asked to remain closed during this time.
Terming the present power supply to Ghaziabad as “extremely grave”, a senior official of the Uttar Pradesh Power Corporation Ltd. (UPPCL) said they had received many complaints from industrialists but were helpless as there was scanty supply of power.
The official said that apart from the presently ailing units, some more units of Anpara power station have been shut down – further reducing the current power supply in the state.
“We are facing a demand of about 950 MW from the district but are able to supply just 400 MW only. The current crisis is due to less generation of power in the state,” the official said.
The superintending engineer (urban distribution) refused to comment and said he had no figures available with him.
However, District Magistrate R. Ramesh Kumar said they were trying to feed the demand as much as possible with the limited resources available.
“We cannot do much to improve the situation unless we get more supply,” he said.