Curtailment hours can rise if people misuse power: Chief Engineer PDD
Seeks people’s cooperation to reduce curtailment hours
Srinagar: Chief Engineer, Power Development Department (PDD), Aijaz Ahmed Dar Wednesday said that curtailment in the distribution of electricity will go up if people won’t cooperate and avoid misusing electricity.
The PDD Chief Engineer said that a new curtailment schedule will be published in coming days.
“The curtailment duration will be minimum and it will come down further if people will cooperate and use electricity judiciously,” he said.
Dar said that there is at least 2-hours power curtailment in metered areas and over 3-hour load shedding in non-metered areas of Srinagar district.
“Last year our consumption was 1225 MWs in October but this has gone up and right now we are consuming 1475 MWs. We have constituted different inspection teams and even night inspection teams are present on ground. We will get over power woes only if we understand our role and use electricity judiciously,” he said.
In response to a question, Dar said there is a need for power curtailment schedule in view of the increase in demand.
“We did not curtail power this year till October and still curtailment schedule has not been published. The load however, has increased now and we are framing power curtailment schedule which will be issued in coming days,” Chief Engineer said.
He said that there will be improvement in power supply and the hours of curtailment can come down if people cooperate with the Department.
“We have to optimize things from available resources and people ought to understand this. We have seen that power thefts and use of heaters and boilers by the consumers cause overloading. People should use electricity judiciously,” he appealed people
Meanwhile, officials of the PDD launched a drive against illegal connections during which connections were snapped and heaters and boilers were seized in multiple villages of Central Kashmir’s Ganderbal district.
The drive was launched in Arhama and its adjoining villages under the supervision of a special team.
A PDD official told that the raids were conducted to minimize the illegal power load so that people can be given relief from unscheduled power curtailment.
“We seized a large number of illegal power appliances being used by the people which were putting extra load on power distribution in the area,” the official said.
The sized appliances include heaters, water boilers, heating rods and other items.
“If people refrain from using such appliances illegally as well as from illegal hooking, they can get rid of unscheduled power curtailment,” the official added. (KNT)
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