On Saturday, south Mumbai once again faced power cuts for a long haul, this time in the Chira Bazaar area mainly because of a cable fault. The residents claimed that the power cut took place at 10 am and it returned only by 8 pm or so.
"There was no electricity since 10 am. No one responded despite repeatedly calling on their helpline number. Finally, we had to personally go and complain after which the supply was rectified," said Espy Maureen, a resident of Chira Bazaar.
This family was without electricity for almost 10 hours. Throughout the day, the families struggled as mobile phone charge were draining with other things and on top of that, the heat was making it worse for surviving this power failure.
Another resident D Vyas who stays in Bhuleshwar said that they have been facing power failures for the past three days now and all that BEST keeps saying is it's due to cable fault.
Meanwhile, BEST authorities claim that the neighbouring buildings in the locality at Chira Bazaar faced disruption in supply owing to a cable fault. The BEST engineers and staff reached the site for rectification which they did within a few hours.
However, the residents from that locality claim that a couple of buildings continued to face power disruption and the BEST staff were facing issues in rectifying the fault at specific locations that led to continued blackout in a few buildings in the area.
Sources said that initially there were around 5-6 buildings in that locality which faced total blackout.
FPJ reported about BEST's long term plan of replacing the 1,000 km long power supply cables at a cost of Rs 3,500 crore. According to the reports, they will also carry out other upgrades in the system.
The power cables are 70-80 years old and have become worn out plus the ongoing works on Metro rail are also causing damage to these underground cable lines. Mumbai's power demand is galloping at 3800 Mw and more while that of the island city was crossing 900 Mw.
