City residents reel under frequent power outages

Residents of many sectors here continued to reel under frequent power cuts on Monday. Outages were reported from Sectors 11, 22, 21, 37, 41 and 43, and Manimajra.

Daria resident Kavita said the village had been witnessing regular power cuts for several days. Sector 41 residents said they faced a power cut in the afternoon.

The administration has handed over the power supply operations to a private company. However, the firm is yet to make foolproof arrangements for ensuring uninterrupted supply of power.

Chairman of the Chandigarh Residents Associations Welfare Federation (CRAWFED) Hitesh Puri said, amid peak summers, the situation was a “nightmare” for residents.

He added that he was receiving a barrage of complaints regarding power cuts from all sectors daily.

Since residents were paying more charges for electricity in comparison to neighbouring cities, they expected to get better power supply, he added.

He said a delegation of the federation would soon meet officials of the private company entasked with supplying power to the city to ensure that the problem was resolved.

Chandigarh Beopar Mandal president Sanjeev Chadha said uninterrupted power supply was the backbone of the economy.

He said, due to unscheduled power cuts, traders were facing huge losses — leading to losses to the economy.

Businesses could only flourish if the government provided better facilities, he added.Chadha said, besides unscheduled power cuts, many sectors were also witnessing voltage fluctuations.

Industrialist Chander Verma said industries were the worst affected due to unscheduled power cuts.

Outages affected production, he added, stating that the old infrastructure could not bear the increasing load of electricity.

There was a need for improving infrastructure, for future and present needs, he said.

BJP councillor Saurabh Joshi said the private company managing power supply must improve infrastructure to address complaints promptly.

He said there was need to increase the number of transformers across the city.

Chandigarh