Road cutting remains bone of contention for two
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Chennai: Tangedco engineers are in a quandary over digging up city roads for attending to cable faults. Besieged with complaints from power consumers and road users, the agency is also at cross roads with the Chennai corporation and highways department. For every cable it has to fix, it need permission to cut the road.
Bureaucratic delays have prolonged the restoration of electricity supply. Resumption of power supply in the event of interruption in the corporation limits is a cumbersome job, said Tangedco’s field engineers. The Chennai distribution network is connected through underground cable system of various voltage ratings viz LT 400 volts cable, HT 11 KV/33 KV cable, EHT 110 KV/ 230 KV cable. Individual houses remain connected with LT cable from mini pillar-boxes to the point of supply.
The cable networks, both HT and LT, often get punctured or damaged by other agencies such as Metro Rail, telephones and Metro Water, when they undertake works. Such damages result in power outages causing interruption of power supply, said an engineer.
On an average, there may be around 100 LT and 10 HT faults recorded every day in the city. “Supply has to be restored within permissible time intervals as mandated by TNERC,” the engineer said. To attend to cable fault, the agency has to secure road cutting permission from the corporation or highways department and police.
“The process of securing permission normally takes three to seven days. During this intervening period, field engineers should be fortunate and there should not be any problem posing threat to back feeding arrangement,” the official said. The situation is far worse, in the event cable faults on the roads are maintained by the highways department. Although, Tangedco compensates the corporation for cutting roads, officials are reluctant to accord approvals within reasonable time, officials said.
Tamil Nadu Electricity Board Engineers’ Association has urged the chairman and managing director of Tangedco to take up the issue with the state government and arrange to pass suitable government order enabling the utility to carry out to road cuts wherever emergency nature arises.
Activist files complaint against pvt telecom firm:
Tangedco faces delays in getting corporation’s nod for opening up roads to carry out repair work but private telecom companies carry out work with expired permissions if one goes by a recent incident in East Abiramapuram at Mylapore.
Activist J. Mohanraj has filed a police complaint against a private telecom company for damaging an 11 kv power cable on Second Street, East Abiramapuram, Mylapore by illegally digging the road. Mohanraj stopped workers of a private company attempting to dig the road on October 19 as they had an expired permission. However, the company went ahead and dug the road on October 24, damaging a power cable.
( Source : deccan chronicle )
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