Sundargarh hamlets forced to live without power for a year

ROURKELA: Around 5,000 people residing in 38 hamlets in Sundargarh’s Bargaon block have been living in darkness for a long time because the transformers installed in their area are defunct. And all efforts to move the authorities to repair those have fallen on deaf ears.
The transformers have been burning out at different times and frequently over the past one year. While some hamlets are in the dark since a year, others have been luckier with the duration being six months or less.
“We have met the block development officer, tehsildar, sub-collector and Wesco officials and informed them about our electricity problems due to disorders in the transformers but the problem persists,” said Puspanjali Minz, chairman of Bargaon block.
The lack of power supply has not only disrupted day-to-day activities in the hamlets but also affected the online classes of school children during the lockdown and after. People also live in fear as elephants often enter their hamlets in the darkness.
Minz said after much persistence a meeting was conducted on September 2 with officials of Western Electricity Supply Company (Wesco) at the block office where people of the affected villages expressed concern over the situation. “The Wesco officials have ensured that they will try to replace 15 transformers by the end of this month and the rest by October-end,” she added.
Sub-collector (Sundargarh) Abhimanyu Behera said the district administration had also taken up the matter with Wesco officials following the representation from villagers. “We had conducted a meeting with Wesco officials in which we directed them to take up the matter on a priority basis and restore the power supply,” said Behera. “They informed us that the transformer used in this project are different from the traditional transformer and they will need similar transformers to replace the defunct one,” Behera added.
The executive engineer concerned has already written about the defunct transformer to the Power Grid Corporation India Limited, which will conduct an inquiry into it and take necessary action for their replacement after discussing with the supplier, said A N Meher, superintendent engineer, western electricity supply company (Wesco), Rourkela.
Electricity supply was provided to a number of villages in Sundargarh district under the Deendayal Upadhyaya Gram Jyoti Yojana, a rural electrification scheme of the Union government. Crores of rupees were spent on the scheme in Sundargarh district and about 3,000 transformers had been procured from a Hyderabad-based company by Wesco to be installed in areas under the distribution company’s jurisdiction.
Out of it, 180 transformers installed in different hamlets of Sundargarh district are defunct.
Villages in Sundargarh’s Nuagaon block also have to do without power supply due to non-functioning of transformers.