The populace of Namrei 33-KV power sub-station in Manipur's Ukhrul district has been at the receiving end of the prolonged power supply failure with the villages under it being completely cut off for almost one month over technical snagging.
This has hugely impacted the normal life of the people, especially students belonging to poor families who could ill-afford alternative power backup.
Coupled with these, there are several daily wage earners who support their family doing carpentry works in addition to youths whose job totally rely on regular power supply with their jobs being purely online based.
Long delays by the department have irked the public so much that they have questioned whether people living in these areas are second-class citizens. To ensure a quality road of potholes and crack-filled national highway 205, which connects Ukhrul to Jessami, has been the long pending demand of the people.
Expressing strong dissatisfaction with the prolonged power outage, one J Lungleng, a youth from the area decried the pathetic functioning of the station alleging that whenever technical issues develop it takes several days or weeks to fix the problem, be it major or minor, at the cause of consumers.
People cutting across professions know the relevance of uninterrupted power supply, however, sadly, our area is far lacking behind in this direction, he said.
He then made a clarion call to the concerned electric department (power company) responsible for its maintenance to ensure uninterrupted power supply to the station which has been frequently facing power outages.
Sources revealed to the Imphal Free Press that due to “conductor snapped” in between Talui and Namrei village in Manipur’s Ukhrul district, power supply couldn’t be restored on time. All the electric connection lines in Ukhrul and Kamjong districts have developed problems following cyclone remal in the state. Namrei substation couldn’t be restored on time due to these pressing developments.
Meanwhile, sources said that the concerned electric department is making all efforts to fix the problem.
Following the tropical cyclone remal in the state, all the line connections of Ukhrul headquarters, Namrei-Jessami, Kamjong, Phungyar, Nungpi/Longpi and Litan have developed technical snag with electrical poles being uprooted in different areas.
The department then dispatched teams to different areas to detect and fix the problem.
It may be mentioned that the Imphal Free Press has made a series of reports on the poor functioning of these power sub-station. Given its abysmal maintenance record, the populace has tagged the station as the worst performing one among all the sub-stations in the district.
Till the time of filing this report there is no report of power restoration.
