Kupwara area residents rue severe power cuts

Kupwara, Dec 1: Dozens of villages in the Ramhall area of north Kashmir’s Kupwara district are witnessing prolonged power cuts, severely affecting the daily life of locals.

The unscheduled power cuts have become a daily routine and during the last 10 days, electricity has been reduced to only 8-10 hours a day which has worsened the situation further.

The residents said that every year they are subjected to a severe power crisis.

As a result, a huge chunk of the population suffers daily.

“This is just the start of winter. One can understand how worse the situation could be at the peak of winter,” they said.

The residents said that the curtailment schedule was not being adhered to by the Power Development Department (PDD) and during peak hours, the situation was even worse as they could hardly see their lamps glowing.

“Suppose we are scheduled to get electricity from 5 pm to 8 pm, during these three hours we get only 1 hour of electricity. Don’t know what happened to the government's claims of better electricity this year,” Nadeem Ahmad Khan, a social activist from Lilam, Vilgam said.

“Since most of the population in Ramhall can’t bear the expenses of buying an inverter, people either use lighting gas or candles in the evening to light their homes. Despite paying Rs 720 every month we are still being pushed towards darkness,” he said.

The students of the area are also anguished about severe power cuts in the entire Ramhall belt.

“The absence of electricity is affecting our studies and depriving us of basic comfort. The gravity of the problem can be accessed from the fact that our mobile phones often remain switched off, depriving us of online classes,” a student said.

Block Development Council (BDC) Chairman, Vilgam, Muhammad Yasin told Greater Kashmir that the entire area was getting only 8-10 hours of electricity, much to the disappointment of the people.

He said that with each passing day, power curtailments were increasing, affecting the lives of the people.

He sought immediate intervention from the district administration in this regard so that the power supply in Ramhall could be enhanced.