NAUNDERO: A major electricity breakdown cost half of Naudero residents sleepless night and miserable hot day of summer here since Eid night. Unprecedented power outage of over 28 long hours here made the Eid days of the residents extremely miserable in this hot weather due to which they kept on cursing the rulers. The grid station and operation staff failed to find and fix the fault for long time that occurred in feeder-1 due to which half of the residents passed 21 hours without basic necessity of electricity. On next Tuesday night feeder-2 also developed fault and the supply was also closed of feeder-1 due to which residents passed both nights restless.
According to detailed tale, on Monday night at 9.15 pm the power supply of feeder-1 went off and the major part of the town was plunged into darkness on the pretext of fault in the grid station. Suhail Lashari, grid incharge said that a cable has been busted and required technical staff has been called from Larkana which arrived and connected the cable restoring supply at 12.30 am just for 10 minutes.
When supply was not restored till late night, the citizens started sending SMSs to the SEPCO Larkana Superintending Engineer (SE), Executive Engineer (XEN) and relevant Sub Divisional Officer (SDO), Naudero subdivision, Sajjad Memon, and also sought help of social media but no body responded at all as the SE had gone to his hometown to celebrate Eid with his family and other officers were sleeping in their homes. Tweets to water & power ministers and other political leaders also bore no result hence the people passed sleepless night in this scorching heat along with their minor kids.
On Tuesday morning XEN & SDO reached the grid station along with line staff and ordered disconnection of all Pole Mounted Transformers (PMTs) of feeder-1 which were immediately done but fault could not be tracked. Then the filed staff was directed to connect all PMTs one by one but this practice also failed miserably. Finding no way the Journalists talked to the SE Abdul Ahad and XEN Rasheed Wahoocho on phone who were reluctant to accept their inefficiency and tell the truth to media. They just said that a technical fault has surfaced in the grid station which is being removed.
The media persons finally reached the grid station in sizzling heat to find the truth and saw XEN Wahoocho sitting in an air-conditioned room. Ice factory owners also reached the spot as more than five ice factories are on feeder-1 who also complained that they are paying millions of rupees as monthly bills and taxes but they are being denied uninterrupted power supply on one pretext or the other and treated like defaulters. Finally on the suggestion of a young journalist, the fault was found inside the grid, again the staff was called from Larkana and supply was restored at 6.00 pm on Tuesday evening which only lasted for one hour as dust storm hit the town.
Supply was again disrupted in the entire town at 12.00 am on Tuesday night which continued till 7.30 am on Wednesday morning multiplying the woes of the consumers without respite. Water & Power ministers had announced uninterrupted supply during Eid days but their claim was daringly violated here.
PPP Chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari and Ladies Wing President Faryal Talpur were staying at Bhutto House and remained unaware of the worst blackout as all their western side neighbours were suffering due to negligence of SEPCO authorities and were deprived of celebrating Eid with their children in a befitting manner as their bungalow was supplied uninterrupted power supply from one special feeder but Bilawal remained uninformed about the woes & sufferings of his hometown citizens.
Published in Daily Times, June 29th, 2017.
