No power in 6 Noida sectors for 5 hours, outages in Ghaziabad too

NOIDA: On Wednesday, one of the hottest days of the month as a heat wave continues to scorch the region, residents of sectors 28, 29, 30, 31, 36 and 37 spent five hours without electricity.
Power supply was interrupted through the day, and around 3pm it stopped completely and wasn’t restored till 8pm.
“There is no electricity in the entire Sector 36. Nearly 8,000 people are suffering and nobody responded to the phone calls.One day a transformer bursts, the next day a cable burns, and the torture continues. Every year we face this issue. Nothing is being done to improve conditions, only tariff is increased on a regular basis,” said Anju Pachauri, a resident.
A fault in a cable in Sector 28 that is fed by the Botanical Garden substation caused the outage in these sectors, said VN Singh, chief zonal engineer, Paschimanchal Vidyut Vitran Nigam Limited (PVVNL), told TOI. He added that the additional electricity line for the area in Sector 31 also didn’t work, thus prolonging the power cut.
While sweating it out in 45 degree Celsius, residents complained the power department left in the dark by about the developments. “There was no intimation from the power department as to how long it will take to fix,” said a resident of Sector 28.
Most of the residents said the electricity supply has not improved since last year. “There’s no arrangement done to cater to the load of the sector by placing high capacity transformers. We spent sleepless nights in the peak summer months last year. The situation is the same this year," said Ranjan Tomar from Sector 36.
Power cuts have also become frequent in Ghaziabad over the last three days, most of them lasting for about four hours on an average. The power department is attributing this to the rise in demand in the last fortnight and local faults.
“At a time when most people are forced to stay indoors and the temperature is above 42 degree Celsius, load shedding is the last thing we needed,” DK Pandey of Arihant Harmony Apartment in Indirapuram.