As the summer peaks, the electricity department officials seem to be vanishing in thin air, or so say city residents, frustrated by their failure to contact officials during any emergency.
Also, residents complained that the helpline numbers remain unattended for long hours, though officials said that was primarily due to the large number of calls received every day.
Officials said about 3,000 calls were received on the emergency numbers every day on an average, but many city residents said they were unable to get through even after repeated attempts.
“Lodging complaints takes anywhere between one and two hours, and the time taken to attend to the complaints is even longer,” many citizens said.
While scheduled power cuts have been done away with in the city, some areas continue to face outages, besides frequent short disruptions of 10-15 minutes throughout the day.
Ghislaine Wong, a resident of Turka Yamjal, said, “We face power cuts ranging from four to six hours. Then there are disruptions many times throughout the day. This is getting too much to bear, especially in summer.”
Many others also said they have to spend money to fix gadgets gone kaput due to electrical problems arising from frequent power disruptions and voltage fluctuations.
“Sudden voltage fluctuations often damage electrical equipment,” said T. Anjali, a resident, adding, “My microwave and air-conditioner were damaged twice over the last week, but I was unable to lodge a complaint on those days.”