Jorhat, April 10: BSNL landline customers here have been left high and dry with authorities not paying heed to restore connections, as more than 50 phones in the commercial hub of Jorhat town are non-functional since a year now.

Hardeep Singh, a businessman, whose land line service has been out of order since last year, said work in his showroom suffered as those who wanted to pay by credit and debit cards could not swipe their cards.

“For more than a year now the BSNL landline service in my shop has been out of order and the credit card machine has become a dead investment, as without the telephone connection it cannot be used,” he said.

He said the linesmen sent by BSNL to repair the fault were quite lackadaisical in their attitude and had advised him and others to give up the landline, as it was like a dinosaur in the present age.

The linesmen had also told him that because of work going on at the Planetarium and other places in the vicinity, the cables had been uprooted and needed to be laid again to restore the landline connections, which would take time.

Another shopowner said a few cables were still connected and linesmen would connect the active cables with a non-functioning phone and disconnect a working phone, almost like musical chairs, on receiving a complaint. In the meantime, he and the other BSNL customers were paying the phone rentals regularly.

However, fed up with the continuous inaction, he had given up paying the rentals and had recently received a disconnection notice from BSNL, which he said was unjustified given that their phones were not working.

BSNL official Hara Saikia blamed the development work in Jorhat for this problem.

Admitting that a number of phones had become defunct in Thana Road and its vicinity, Saikia said this was because underground cables had been cut several times by workmen laying drains. “Each time we repair one cable, they go on to cut another section. Jorhat is being developed with the widening of roads and a new drainage system, but at the cost of BSNL,” Saikia said.

“Once the roads are widened from 16-18 feet to 24-25 feet, the underground cables which were earlier at the side will get buried under the road and it would be impossible to dig up to unearth the fault.”

Saikia said those who were suffering should apply for waiver of the rental to the BSNL and this would be done.

From 11,000 BSNL landlines in 2001-02 in Jorhat, the figure has reduced to 6,000.