Patna, Sept. 16: A fire at the lone transformer repair workshop in Rajvanshi Nagar has rendered it dysfunctional.

Sources said residents, especially in the rural areas of the district, would have to suffer, if their local transformers catch fire.

The workshop caught fire around midnight yesterday. Bihar State Electricity Board (BSEB) and Patna Electric Supply Undertaking (Pesu) officials today claimed that there would not be any shortage of transformers in the capital and the rural areas.

Board spokesperson H.R. Pandey told The Telegraph: “There will be no problem as far as replacing burnt transformers is concerned. We are also trying to make alternative arrangements to start the workshop as soon as possible so that the repair work is not affected.”

Pandey said BSEB chairman K. Rai and other senior officers had inspected the site and constituted a committee to find out the cause behind the fire, the loss of revenue and to suggest measures to restart the workshop at the earliest.

Pesu general manager-cum-chief engineer SKP Singh said there would be no problem in replacing burnt transformers.

Explaining the reason behind the claim, Singh added: “We have enough stock of transformers with which we can meet any requirement. Also, there is no pending work for repairing burnt transformers.”

Around 3,700 transformers cater to the needs of around 3 lakh consumers in the state capital under the jurisdiction of Pesu.

The area has been divided into 10 zones for the smooth distribution of power.

He added: “The number of transformers that get burnt during October and March is significantly less than that those between April and September. Between October and March, we get very few complaints of transformer fires per day, whereas in the peak period, around four to five transformers catch fire everyday. As we are already halfway through September and the weather is not very hot, we do not expect too many complaints.”

Chief minister Nitish Kumar has instructed the power board to replace burnt transformers in the city within 24 hours and within 72 hours in rural areas.

Sources, however, said though transformers in the urban areas were replaced in time, residents of rural areas often faced difficulty in getting their problems addressed.

The state has transformer repair workshops at Patna, Gaya, Muzaffarpur, Bhagalpur, Katihar and Saharsa, where about 700 transformers are repaired each month.