Srinagar: Advisor to Lieutenant Governor Baseer Ahmad Khan Monday inspected various ongoing projects of Power Development Department and visited the Stores at Bemina.
He enjoined upon the officers to provide better power supply to the consumers and take all necessary measures to gear up for upcoming winter season.
The Advisor made these remarks while visiting several Receiving stations being constructed under Prime Minister’s Development Plan (PMDP) and IPDS in the Srinagar city here. He asked the executing agency to complete the work on these installations before the onset of winter season so that people of Srinagar and adjoining areas are able to draw benefits during winters. The Advisor exhorted upon the officers to make all these receiving stations functional and fixed the timeline of 30th September, 2021 in respect of each of them.
The Advisor visited the receiving stations at Wanabal, Batamaloo and SMHS Srinagar and inspected the ED-II and ED-III stores at Bemina. The Advisor was informed that the Power Development Department is constructing seven Receiving Stations in the city and these Receiving Stations are developed on the latest GPS platform with state of the art technology and shall substantially increase the power supply in the city and adjoining areas. The Advisor also instructed the Distribution and maintenance wing to ensure that the work and distribution connected with these receiving stations is completed before the timelines as mentioned in respect for completion of receiving stations.
At the Stores at Bemina he was informed that 900 poles have been received against the demand of 1500 and the rest are expected to be received by the end of September.
The Advisor asked the officers to activate their enforcement squads to stop the pilferage of power effectively. He directed for upscaling of efforts to bolster the revenue collection besides ensuring replacement of damaged transformers within a span of 24 hours as already outlined by the Hon’ble Lieutenant Governor and conveyed to them during series of meetings taken by the Advisor. He asked them to create a transformer bank and make a contingency plan with regard to the outages.
The Advisor asked the officers to devise a round the clock duty roster of staff to man these installations efficiently. He asked them that sufficient number of personnel should remain available at the stations every time. He further directed them to project their manpower requirements beforehand so that these are met before the completion of these projects. The Advisor directed the officers to have a robust grievance redressal mechanism in place. The inspection of grievance logbooks and review should be done by the senior officers on weekly basis, the Advisor said.
The Advisor called for making pre-emptive measures for tackling all the exigencies by the department itself. He urged them to augment the capacity of all the divisional or district workshops to meet the requirements of repairing transformers within the set deadlines. He asked them to complete the procurement of inventories well in time as already directed in the meetings taken with regard to the winter preparedness.
The Advisor directed the officers of Power Development Department to expedite the process of Branch cutting along all the corridors through which electric wires pass so that there is no undue power snapping during the snowfall in winters. The Advisor further directed the officers to start third stint of branch cutting from 8th of September and complete the process within 10 days.
The Advisor was informed that once the projects get completed it would augment city power with about 80 MWs. He was further informed that the stores of ED-I and ED-II have enough quantity of transformers, poles, conductors and wire available for ongoing works and upcoming winter season. The Advisor directed the officers to replace the old rotten poles, conductors and wires expeditiously—(KNO)
