Andhra Pradesh had just half its daily requirement of electricity on the second day of the Seemandhra electricity employees strike on Monday. With 4,200 MW remaining off grid, emergency services and train movement were badly affected.
Andhra Pradesh had just half its daily requirement of electricity on the second day of the Seemandhra electricity employees strike on Monday. With 4,200 MW remaining off grid, emergency services and train movement were badly affected. Most vital installations, including Vizag and Vijayawada airports, are running on back-up power systems, as were major factories and most shops in the region. While the city experienced power outages intermittently, Visakhap-atnam, Krishna, Nellore, East and West Godavari, Anantapur, Kadapa and Kurnool districts experienced crippling power shortages. APTransco officials announced they would impose power cuts from 8 am to 12 noon and from 1 pm to 5 pm on Tuesday. The power cuts may be increased in coming days, deputy executive engineer Venkateswarlu said. For the first time in its history, all seven generation units at the 1,760 Dr Narla Tata Rao Thermal Power Station were completely shut down. With no power, drinking water supply, train services and hospitals were affected as were shops and industries. The prolonged power cuts also affected several ATMs in the Seemandhra region. Close to 100 feeders and 166 transformers have tripped, and there is no one to fix them. Substations have tripped in Anantapur, Kurnool and Kadapa districts. Small industries in the region were completely closed on Monday, Autonagar Cluster Association member P. Raja said. At RAK Ceramics, 24,000 sq. m of tile production was stopped. Nearly 475 rice mills closed their shutters in East Godavari district. Mineral water units in Kakinada stopped production. Water supply across the state was affected due to the outages. “We have received no water supply in our areas since yesterday. Tankers are demanding a premium,” said Syed Alam of Mehdipatn-am in Hyderabad. Bottled water was in great demand, and 20-litre cans were sold at up to '40, up from the normal '25. In Nellore, public sympathy for the strikers seemed dented with the long hours of power cuts. Locals were questioning if punishing the people of their own region was worth it. In many places, locals staged demonstrations demanding restoration of power supply. In Srisailam, APGenco officials have deputed a few employees from the Jurala project in Telangana area to restore power generation at Srisailam project, where all the seven units are down since Sunday. However, the Vidyut JAC staged a dharna at the main gate of Srisailam project to protest the measure, and the Jurala staff returned home. In Visakhapatnam, people in dire need of cash are unable to draw money from ATMs either because there is no cash, or they have run out of power. For example, in Vizag, almost 80 per cent of the 360 ATMs were out of order.
