Nagpur: It’s that time of summers when Nagpurians get the major shock of the year, thanks to the highly inflated power bills and frequent load shedding, thanks to the apathy and whims of both the government run power distributor MSEDCL and its private counterpart SNDL. The citizens have now started complaining of inflated meter readings resulting into the bills running as high as their combined bill amount of six months.
“The MSEDCL and SNDL plays smart and take advantage of the summer consumption in households to justify their hyper billing spree,” says a citizen who was mostly out on vacation in the month of May along with his family but got the whopping bill amount of Rs 6000.
Another customer complained, “The officials are crazy behind achieving their financial target and in a way looting the customers by imposing the bills disproportionate to their actual consumption.”
Moreover, the frequent load shedding has only added to the woes.
Power breakdowns have become frequent in the last few days. MSEDCL consumers are complaining too but the situation appears to be better in the government-run company’s area.
While MSEDCL was able to restore feeder level breakdowns by 11.30pm on Monday when heavy storm lashed the city, SNDL completed the job only by 3pm on Tuesday. According to SNDL officials, a major breakdown in Cancer Hospital was the reason for the delay.
Pallavi Bhuchal, a resident of Byramji Town, said that power breakdowns had become frequent. “Just a few days ago there was no supply for four hours. Then on Monday, power went off at 6pm and came back at 1am. I have to get up early in the morning and could not get a proper sleep due to the breakdown. Ever since SNDL has taken over, power goes off even when there is a slight wind or lightning,” she said.
Kaustav Chatterjee, a resident of Civil Lines, slammed SNDL for poor service and alleged it was understaffed. “The call centre was not responding on Monday. I then called up several officials when finally one of them asked the linemen to attend to my complaint. They just had to remove a branch that had fallen on the wire. For this we went without power for six hours. The linemen told me only two people were tending to the whole area so they were helpless,” he said.
KT Nagar resident Abhishek Singh complained that whenever there is a strong wind, power supply goes off. “We went without power for three hours. The call centre number was continuously engaged,” he said. Seema Shah, a resident of Ramdaspeth is not pleased with MSEDCL’s service. “We went without power for seven hours from 5.30pm to 1.30am. MSEDCL’s service is very poor,” she said.
Sonal Khurana, business head of SNDL, while expressing regret to consumers for breakdowns, said the franchisee was not responsible. “The intensity of the storm was too much. About 70 poles got uprooted and 10km cables got damaged. Six transformers broke down in the storm,” he said.
