Uri village residents protest against hike in electricity bills

Baramulla, Feb 16: The residents of Nambla village in the Uri area of north Kashmir’s Baramulla district Friday staged a protest against the hike in electricity bills.

Raising slogans against the Power Development Department (PDD), the villagers said that they had been receiving inflated bills for the last three months.

They said that this month, the department issued a monthly electricity bill of Rs 1040. “This is a 51 percent hike,” locals said.

Angered at the hike in electricity bills, they took to the streets and staged protests stating that they had been “discriminated against”.

Bashir Ahmad, a Nambla resident said, that such a hike in electricity bills was unacceptable. He said most of the villagers in Nambla live in abject poverty.

“The entire village is close to the Line of Control. Locals here face challenges and have fewer economic opportunities,” he said. “For the villagers of Nambla, it is hard to pay hiked electricity bills.”

Ahmad said that the authorities should immediately roll back the decision to hike electricity bills to the residents of Nambla village.

Lashing at the PDD authorities, another Nambla resident said that the village was one of the most populated villages of Uri. He said that the people of the village were fed up with the unscheduled power cuts and hardly received 3 3-hour power supply a day.

The Nambla residents questioned the PDD’s decision to issue electricity bills of Rs 1040 despite irregular power supply to the area.

“This is an injustice to us,” Maqsood Ahmad, a resident of the village said.

He said that if such a practice continues, then the PDD should install meters and charge as per metre reading.