The Hindu : Discom puts up good show

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Mar 26, 2004

Andhra Pradesh

Andhra Pradesh

Discom puts up good show

By Our Special Correspondent

VISAKHAPATNAM, MARCH 25. The Eastern Power Distribution Company of Andhra Pradesh has created a record of sorts by supplying 24 million units to its consumers in Srikakulam, Vizianagaram, Visakhapatnam, East and West Godavari districts during this week as against 19.2 million units during the corresponding period last year. It could thus meet the steep increase in demand from the agriculture sector and prevented crops from withering away, according to its Chairman and Managing Director, Y. Gopalakrishna Murthy.

In a press note here on Thursday, Mr. Gopalakrishna Murthy said the distribution company had not been getting its quota of power because of outage of generating units at Talcher and other places. So it was cutting supply to industries and ensured nine-hour supply to agriculture, he said. All efforts were being made to save the standing crop. He asked farmers to call load-monitoring centres of the circles or divisions concerned at any time to get their grievances over power supply redressed. He also appealed to them to take up energy saving measures.

Meetings were being held at sub-station level to serve customers better. Following better maintenance of lines, breakdowns for 11 kv feeders came down to 88 during last week as against 187 reported during the same period last year. Similarly, the breakdown of 33 kv feeders came down from 20 to five. As many as 849 complaints were received at electricity call centres during last one week and of them 833 were attended. In all, 5,098 persons applied for new connection from the existing lines and of them 2,048 were released and others were under process.

The distribution company ensured nine-hour power supply to agriculture and interacting with farmers at sub-station level to see that crops did not wither away.

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Andhra Pradesh