Residents of Moorthingar Street in Vyasarpadi, under the Perambur Assembly constituency, stage a road blockade on Friday afternoon, protesting against unannounced daily power cuts that have affected the locality for the past few days.
electricity and law minister R Nirmalkumar said the previous DMK govt bought ‘high-cost’ power through short-term agreements While releasing the white paper on the energy department in July. Hardly any neighbourhood is spared from unscheduled power cuts and fluctuations since July. Residents of Washermenpet and Royapuram were the latest to join the series of protests. The problem lies in both generation and distribution. Making matters worse, the grievance redressal mechanism has collapsed, meaning consumers are suffering on all three crucial aspects. The extended summer has caught the Tamil Nadu Power Distribution Corporation (TNPDCL) off guard. The unprecedented surge in power demand, limited generation from the state’s own plants, and indecisiveness over alternative arrangements have led to the sorry state of affairs in the state. Poor coordination of NPDCL officials with contractors of other agencies such as MAWS and GCC, despite multiple interagency meetings, also led to outages in several pockets of the city. TNPDCL recently lodged a police complaint against Torrent Gas for damaging an underground cable, which left Avadi and Pattabiram residents in darkness.
On Thursday night, they thronged the local section offices and quarrelled with officers. The electricity minister on Friday said the officers had been directed to lodge police complaints against agencies that cause damage to TNPDCL properties.
Minnagam, the centralised call centre set up to receive electricity-related complaints from across the state via the dedicated phone number 94987-94987, is the principal channel through which consumers report electricity complaints. But it often falls dead, making it impossible for consumers to report grievances.