In the past two weeks 5 incidents of Street Light Poles catching Fire in E-Block alone. One incident was particularly scary as the Loud Fireworks that went on for over ten minutes and could be heard three streets away. Thank God none of the incidents turned disastrous as many cars parked nearby. On each occasion residents had to bear hours of power outage in the sweltering 48 degrees heat.
It took BSES over 18 hours to replace burnt cables, one can imagine life during these outages, no power means, No Water, No Internet, in many cases No Cooking, phones running out of charge. The rules say BSES is supposed to be penalized for local faults that are longer than two hours. Who checks for such penalties, do they even get logged or reported?
Twice every year before Peak Consumption Period at the onset of Summer and Winter, RWA’s receive Public Notices from BSES informing of Day Long outages for Routine Maintenance. One wonders, what do they check during such outages. Do they check for Load on each Pole ? I say this because two poles caught fire twice, means that they draw more load than the wires can take. Should there not be proper distribution of load between poles so that wires do not heat up and catch fire?
Unlike a decade ago, Media used to go to town regarding power cuts, now residents suffer in while venting their ire on WhartsApp Groups. RWA’s should collectively question BSES about their readiness for peak load and hold them accountable.
