MUMBAI: Residents and shopkeepers in parts of Bhuleshwar and Kalbadevi faced power outage for over five and half hours on Thursday evening, and there was no respite despite several calls to BEST. Residents in other parts of the city also faced power cuts, which is a major inconvenience in this sultry weather.
“Power cuts continue even now and we are plunged into darkness,” said a resident of Bhuleshwar at 11pm.Last week, parts of island city, like Bhuleshwar and Kalbadevi, saw the third consecutive day of power outage on Friday, lasting up to 45 minutes. A BEST official has blamed it on a “cable fault”.
After MLA Ashish Shelar wrote to Adani Electricity last week, another legislator, Amin Patel, petitioned the BEST undertaking on Thursday pointing to repeated outages which had left thousands of citizens in the island city fuming and frustrated.
Patel pointed out in his letter to BEST that in a few areas there were outages which ranged from 10 to 12 hours, and in some cases it was even 24 hours and 36 hours. He told TOI that some of the schools, nursing homes, offices, shops and several residential areas, including highrise apartments, were badly impacted. Also affected were those depending on oxygen cylinders at home, other patients and senior citizens. Patel said there was shortage of staff in BEST that delayed the restoration of supply, besides shortage of material to be used for restoration. A senior BEST official said they will look into every complaint and try to rectify the system.