Amid cold wave: Valley faces power blackout
Supply restored in 90% areas of Jammu: officials
Srinagar, CNS, 20-Dec; As the ongoing strike by the employees of the J&K Power Development Department/Corporation employees is lingering on, there are reports of long power blackouts being received from many areas across Kashmir.
Reports received by CNS suggest power blackouts are happening in Kashmir with several districts experiencing outages due to major equipment faults.
As, Kashmir is already facing long power cuts during winters because of the huge gap between supply and demand. The strike by power employees has impacted consumers badly as this time many COVID patients are on oxygen support at their respective homes and disruption in the power supply can prove fatal for them.
In Srinagar, it’s minus 6 degrees and several other parts of Kashmir are much colder. The Met Office has predicted a further drop in minimum temperature and also snowfall this week.
Likewise these types of complaints of prolonged power cuts, in case of any damage to transformers or transmission nobody is coming forward to repair them leaving people in darkness.
A spokesman of Power Employees and Engineers Joint Coordination Committee said they had presented a four-point formula to the Government but it failed to accept their demands, including a white paper on non-fulfilment of the recommendations of the unbundling report and the failure to create positions as mandated by the committee at Gazetted and Non-Gazetted levels, regularisation of daily wagers and regularisation of all Power Development Department engineers.
They also demanded delinking their salary from grant-in-aid and releasing a regular budget for all PDD employees on deputation to different Corporations and a white paper of service condition of PDD employees on deputation to the Chenab Valley Power Projects Private Limited (CVPPL) and similarly situated employees deputed from the NHPC, the spokesperson said.
“The path of confrontation is being pushed by the Government, and unless it comes up with a concrete resolution of the issues, PDD employees shall be forced to proceed on work boycott,” another spokesperson of the PEECC said.
He said repairs and restoration work would not be undertaken at all unless the feeder is supplied to any hospital. The work boycott will stand unless the Government gives a written assurance accepting their demands, he added.
Officials say negotiations were held with striking employees but failed to break the ice.
Ajaz Ahmad, Chief engineer power department said he has been talking to employees but so far there is “no headway”.
“I have requested them to call off the strike because people suffer during these extreme cold wave conditions: But employees refuse. They want their demands to be accepted” he said.
Meanwhile, on Sunday, in a communication addressed to the army, Jammu Divisional Commissioner Raghav Langer said that due to the strike by electricity department personnel, essential services have been severely affected in Jammu region.
“We would like to hereby requisition the Indian army to assist in the restoration of the essential services by provisioning manpower to main critical electricity stations and water supply sources,” Langer said.
The army was deployed to restore essential services hit by the ongoing strike of electricity department personnel here, officials said on Sunday.
The army acted swiftly and deployed its troops at main critical electricity stations and restored supply to almost 90% areas of the Jammu division.
” 26 feeders/stations restored by power grid, REC engineers/ linemen in Jammu Div overnight with the help of MES engineers. 10 stations in Jammu town made operational overnight and power has been restored in most of the areas. Tentha (jandrore) grid station Udhampur has been restored. 33 KV Bhalawal feeder restored at Barn S/S,” Govt officials said.
Pertinently, the employees have been on strike from Friday midnight. They have decided not to carry out any repair and maintenance work until the government accepts their demands.
The employees say the assets built over decades by successive governments in J&K are now up for sale under Union territory administration.
Since Saturday, employees have been holding protests in all parts of Jammu and Kashmir. From linesmen to senior engineers, every employee of the PDD is part of the strike. (CNS)
