HYDERABAD: Violent street protests continued on Thursday in different parts of the city over failure of the Hyderabad Electric Supply Company (Hesco) to ensure normal power supply to many areas amid extremely hot weather conditions prevailing in the region for a week.

Apart from increased loadshedding, the huge number of complaints lodged by consumers in Hyderabad related to breakdowns caused either by burnt down transformers, poor quality repair work, overloading, tripping of system, snapped wires etc.

During the ongoing protests, three Hesco sub-divisional offices — Gari Khata, Shaheed Umed Ali and Liaquat Colony — have already been ransacked.

“Around 50 transformers have so far burnt out and replaced since Friday last,” said Hesco chief engineer (operations) Umed Ali Qureshi when contacted for his comment on Hesco’s failure to manage breakdowns. He said that the burnt out transformers were sent to the old power house for repairs. “Replacement of a transformer takes six to eight hours,” the CE said, but most consumers often complained that the work was not done 16 to 18 hours after a such a complaint was attended by Hesco workers. In most such cases, people enduring extreme weather conditions and related issues including water shortage resorted to staging violent protests.

A Hesco employee at a sub-divisional office revealed that “the officials in charge of stores don’t issue a transformer as a replacement to the burnt out one without accepting a bribe that varies between Rs5,000 to Rs10,000 demanded from the line superintendent concerned”. He alleged that “line superintendents are considered to be rich’ as they mint money through different tactics. As such, they are exposed to blackmail by the officials in charge stores”.

However, CE Qureshi insisted that transformers were issued regularly and got repaired as well.

Wapda CBA president Abdul Latif Nizamani, talking to Dawn rejects the CE’s claim regarding repair of burnt transformers at the old power house facility. “The CE is just lying. No transformer is repaired as this facility, which is not being used for the purpose despite the fact that the CBA had repeatedly raised the issue. We have the required manpower and skilled labour at our disposal,” he said, adding that “all we need is the required material to be provided by the Hesco”.

Mr Nizamani said Hesco was outsourcing repair of transformers. “It opts for getting the work done from private facilities in Kotri which not only delays the replacement work but also compromises on service quality,” he said.

“The transformers repaired at private workshop don’t work properly still Hesco appeared not ready to get the work done at the available facility of its own,” he said, adding that line superintendents also failed to manage load on transformers which ultimately got burnt.

Published in Dawn June 26th, 2015

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