Several areas in the newly developed city of Greater Noida West are reeling under continuous outages in the extreme hot weather, forcing residents to take to the streets against the power supply company.
Residents of some high-rise apartments of Supertech Ecovillage 2 came out onto the streets late on Sunday night to protest against the Noida Power Corporation Limited (NPCL) for continuous outages. Greater Noida (Jewar) MLA Dhirendra Singh has written a letter to the NPCL to ensure uninterrupted power supply.
“The weather is very hot, and we cannot expect to live without electricity. It has been observed that residents of apartments as well as villages are facing frequent outages. I have sought immediate attention from the NPCL on this issue and have asked them to resolve it as soon as possible,” said Singh.
Abhishek Kumar, president of the New Era Flat Owner’s Welfare Association, said that almost all areas of Greater Noida West, also known as Noida Extension, have been affected. He alleged that the situation emerged due to overload on the poor infrastructure.
“Imagine building an entire city without the facilities for it to survive. Some builders draw more power than sanctioned, and the residents pay the price. The NPCL has completely failed to provide uninterrupted power supply; imagine people living without power in high-rise apartments.”
A city resident, Sagar Gupta, who also spoke against the power company, alleged that NPCL “keeps giving excuses and false promises” of uninterrupted supply.
“They don’t seem interested in improving their electricity infrastructure and don’t monitor developers who exploit residents, possibly benefiting from it,” he said.
The NPCL, in a statement, said that they are addressing the situation and stated that many of these housing societies might be facing the outages due to overloading in internal networks of the societies.
Residents claim that outages are occurring over 50 times in one day.
“In peak summers, we get over 50 frequent power cuts every other day. Whenever there is a reduction required in power supply, the UPPCL uses feeder 8 for that purpose, which is supposed to supply power to high-rise apartments,” said Rahul Yadav, a resident of Raksha Adella.
“We are continuously working to cater to increasing demand of the Greater Noida area. This summer, at present, the load has already increased by 80 MW compared to last year’s demand and we are catering to present demand to the fullest extent…”
“Although, we do not have any restriction on power drawal by the Societies; but due to internal faults / overloading in the internal electrical network of the Societies, many of the societies may be experiencing outages due to the same…,” the company said.
In view of the situation, the representatives of the apartment owners and the NPCL officials are likely to have a meeting soon.
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Source Agencies
