Wooden poles pose threat to farmers

 Wooden poles set up at Madhapur in Neredigonda  

The wooden poles erected in place of cement electric poles are posing life threat to the life of farmers in some villages in Adilabab district.

The villagers have erected these poles as the Transco officials have failed to provide cement poles in these villages to enable supply of power to their fields. 

Wooden poles to facilitate power supply can be seen in many villages of Boath Assembly constituency. Madhapur in Wagdhari gram panchayat is one among the villages.

One of the village elders , Pendore Dharmanna, said, ‘ The Transco officials of Neredigonda have failed to supply two cement electric poles to our village to provide power supply to the Agriculture motors even after repeated appeals for the last four years. 

‘The wires hang precariously over our heads and we can’t avoid incidents of electrocution when the wires get lose’, he said. Then we alert everyone in the village be  careful while going to their fields as coming in contact with the wires can prove fatal, he added.

During the last four years, there were many incidents of electrocution taking place in the villages when farmers switched on the motors in the night time to provide water to their crops or on coming in contact with the live wires having over their heads or when the wooden pole fell on the ground. 

The wooden poles easily lose their base, unlike the cement poles. The incidents of death due to electrocution, both of human and cattle, were reported from these interior villages in the past.    

The farmers of these villages are appealing to the Transco officials to address their problem as summer is fast approaching and there are chances of the wires getting lose more often.  

Steps to prevent short circuit

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.