Load shedding woes in City

Uncertainty prevails over duration of power cuts

As on Wednesday, BESCOM officials stated that power would be cut depending on the allocation to them. This means that the areas which will experience the power cut and the duration of power cuts will also be uncertain.

“The focus will be on the load reduction and this will vary each day. There will be no uniformity to the cuts and we cannot say which area will lose power at what time,” said BESCOM MD Tushar Girinath.

While the whole State is looking towards rains to ease the power situation, the Energy Department will take another week to announce scheduled load shedding. This is, if the monsoons do not materialise in Karnataka, to boost power generation in the hydel reservoirs.

Hit hard

In the meantime, morning schedules for most people have been hit hard, as power cuts have been enforced in the morning, when children have to get ready for school.

“We are resorting to heating water on gas in the morning, which by itself is an expensive proposition. But we do not see any other way out of it,” says Anupama, a homemaker.

Apart from this, frequent interruptions on account of maintenance works in several areas, have raised the hackles of people, who complain of having to live with day-long shutdowns or power cuts amounting to four hours a day.

Under the circumstance, the Government proposal to raise the cost of electricity by 51 paise per unit has not gone well with the consumer.

“This is such bad management by the Government. They never considered any long term planning in terms of growing demand or even controlling the transmission losses. Now we do not have power and we will end up paying more for whatever little we do get.

Despite the power crisis earlier this year, we are now depending completely on the monsoons to bail us out,” Maqsood a resident of Basavanagudi remarks.

Power cut

There will be no power on July 3 from 10 am to 4 pm in the following areas: Gerahalli, Bank Colony, Vidyapeetha, Gangamma Layout, Banashankari 2nd stage, Shastry Nagar, Chennamanakere Achukattu, Srinivas Nagar and surrounding areas.