Power outages in Mohali villages harrowing farmers

Harshabab Sidhu
Nabaz-e-Punjab, Mohali, July 26:
The reality of the tall promises of the state government about the continuous power supply to the farmers has came out.
Paddy fields in villages of Mohali district have dried up due to lack of water following continuous power outages. As a result of which the farmers are at the receiving ends. Due to low yield of wheat and on-going pandemic, the farmers of the district are already going through a period of economic recession.
On the other side, the farmers of the villages also alleged that the officials of Powercom did not behave properly with them when they visits them for problems. The officials did not pick up their calls even, the farmers alleged.
Farmers of village Siao including Kirpal Singh, Harjit Singh, Pramatma Singh, Nambardar Mohan Singh, Gurwinder Singh, Harchand Singh, Bachittar Singh and Harnek Singh said that power supply was disrupted for the last four days. Due to which the paddy crop is drying up and cracks have started appearing in the dry fields due to negligible water. The farmers alleged that the power supply was restored from 10 pm to 12 am last night. Then there was a sudden cut in the night following which power supply kept disrupted for 12 hours. The power supply was restored at 1 am on Sunday but after one hour, the supply got affected and was not restored till the evening.
They demanded that eight hours uninterrupted power supply should be ensured to the farmers for irrigating the paddy.
A Junior Engineer (JE) from Powercomm, Ashish Yadav denied the allegations levelled by the farmers for misbehavior with them. He said the allegations are baseless and fabricated and claimed that they pick up the calls of everyone. He clarified that there was no problem in the line, the supply would come but sometimes there would be a sudden auto cut from the Power Control Headquarters, Patiala. Sometimes, when they get orders to cut power from the higher authorities, they have to follow that, he added.
Powercom Xen Khushinder Singh said he was unaware of the whole matter. He said that power supply was being provided from the grid as per the requirement but he will find out what the village farmers were saying. However, he clarified that there was no order to impose power cut from the head office at Patiala.