Dhanbad: Bokaro residents are reeling under severe power crisis since over a month owing to a chain of problems starting with a coal pricing impasse between CCL and Central Coal Supply Organisation.
Out of the 24 hours in a day, power supply is available for only six to seven hours at over 30,000 quarters in Bokaro Steel City, making students, professionals, traders, shopkeepers and medical institutions face the worst kinds of difficulty.
Expressing his disgust, president of Bokaro Chamber of Commerce Rajendra Prasad Vishwakarma said the situation was so pathetic that patients now had to wait in long queues for hours outside clinical labs and diagnostic centres for X-ray or ultra-sonography tests. "This apart, the restaurant sector is facing the worst problems as refrigerators don't work. Homes are facing acute water crisis as pumps don't work. Students are suffering. How long can one run fans and lights on inverters? Also, inverters need to be charged as well," he said.
B. Mishra, a resident of Cooperative Colony and retired Bokaro Steel personnel manager, said he had never seen such power crisis in Bokaro since his coming to work here in the early 1980s. "We came to work in a planned city. Its power and water supply, roads, were considered one of the best in United Bihar. But our town has gone downhill," he fumed.
Asked why power supply has reached these never-before lows, Bokaro Steel chief of communications Mani Kant Dhan said the problem lay in the lack of full capacity power generation by Bokaro Power Supply Company Pvt. Ltd (BPSCL).
BPSCL, a joint venture company of Steel Authority of India Limited (SAIL) and Damodar Valley Corporation (DVC), supplies around 180MW of power during normal days out of the total total requirement of 350MW, he explained, while BSL also has an agreement with DVC for power supply up to 220MW. "But, owing to coal supply snags, BPSCL plant can generate around 100MW only. So, we are facing difficulty in providing regular power supply to residential colonies." Said Dhan.
Senior manager of BPSCL Manoj Kumar Behera admitted to shortfall in power generati-on. "We are getting less coal su-pply since over a month now, le-ading to this problem," he said.
Prodded about this, Rajeev Tiwari, deputy general manager (coal) of Central Coal Supply Organisation (CCSO), a unit of SAIL responsible for coal supply to BPSCL, said they were helpless at the moment.
Explaining why they were sending less coal to BPSCL, he said, "We get coal from Coal India subsidiaries BCCL and CCL and our own colliery at Chasnala, but since June we ourselves are getting almost negligible coal from CCL over a pricing issue." But he added, "Efforts are being made at the highest level to resolve the issue and ensure sufficient coal supply to BPSCL to ensure full capacity power generation that can help resolve Bokaro's power crisis."
