BENGALURU:The power situation in Bengaluru will take another week to improve. Till then, residents will have to cope with load-shedding. Some respite is expected in the coming days as both the units of Udupi Power Corporation Limited have started working.
Pankaj Kumar Pandey, Managing Director, Bangalore Electricity Supply Company (BESCOM), said, “The situation in urban areas were better on Sunday as most small-scale industries were closed. The state government is making all efforts to reduce power outage.”
“The situation is expected to improve in a week as we are expecting to get extra power from central generating units and talks are on to buy power from Telengana and Tamil Nadu. In addition, some respite is expected as two units of UPCL have started generation and one unit of Ballari Thermal Power Station has also resumed generation,” he said.
Meanwhile, city residents are already fed up with load-shedding which has been in force for the past few weeks.
Chidanand Rajmane, an industrialist and former president of Karnataka Small Scale Industries Association, said, “The last one month has been nightmarish for industries situated outside Bengaluru and drawing power from BESCOM. There were times when we had power cuts for eight to ten hours a day.”
“After our protest against the electricity supply company, the situation has improved a bit now. At the same time, BESCOM is considering providing equal power to all the industries under its jurisdiction which has brought some respite.”
Residents in the city have been complaining that BESCOM is not adhering to the load-shedding schedule and they are facing power cuts for more than four hours in many areas. But BESCOM refuted such claims and said that a Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCDA) system is in place to monitor load shedding.
However, Shivaraju, a resident of Lakshman Rao Nagar slum, said, “No one bothers about us. For the last one week, the area has been suffering due to severe load-shedding and even water is not being supplied on time. We have approached the authorities more than once, but there has been no respite.”
Energy Minister D K Shivakumar had earlier said the state government is floating tenders to buy 900 MW of power to ease the power situation in the state.