Double whammy for power officials

The power department has a double whammy in Adilabad district of Telangana. Apart from criticism for not providing quality power supply to the farmers, the department also had to bear with the extra loss of transformers which got destroyed due to overload.

As many as 800 power transformers got burnt at various places in Adilabad district in August, against usual 200 that get burnt in a normal month and this is attributed to the prevailing drought conditions.

In view of the ongoing dry spell, all farmers switched on their agricultural pump sets to water their standing crops leading to overload.

There are 95,000 agriculture pump sets and 27,486 transformers in Adilabad district. There is a deficit of 1.6 million unit power against the then requirement of 6 million units. However, the Transco officials had been drawing 4.4 million units against the allotted 3.7 million unit quota to Adilabad district.          

Transco superintending engineer, Adilabad circle, A. Ashok, said there has been a lot of pressure from the farmers to replace the damaged electrical transformers. We have repaired nearly 500 transformers and replaced the burnt transformers across the district. “We cannot give more than five- hour power to the agriculture sector in the present situation”.

“In August, there was a sudden rise in the number of transformers getting burnt due to overload following excessive use of agriculture pump sets”, he said. “We are also praying for copious rains as the villagers are detaining, attacking and abusing the power staff for inadequate power supply”.

However, there are complaints from farmers and elected representatives that the Transco officials have been delaying replacement of damaged transformers.