Kulakkarai 2nd street in dark!

CHENNAI: Every time Lakshmi turns on the TV at home, she is more worried than entertained. She has already repaired the TV set twice, thanks to the persistent low-voltage problem, and she cannot afford to take it to the service centre again. Hundreds of residents of Kulakkarai 2nd street in Sikkayapuram near Mangadu have been facing acute power shortage for the past five years.“I bought an air cooler for this summer, but I never used till now because of the low-voltage,” says Sundaresan, a design engineer in a private mechanical firm. Children, women and aged-people are the most affected because of this, he adds. Many residents prefer to sleep on the streets under starry skies due to poor voltage at home. Mala, a pregnant woman, says that she has to sit in front of the verandah or at the balcony to get some air. The fans rotate very slowly without circulating any air inside the room.While the adjacent streets glitter during the night, the ‘second’ street looks gloomy, as it does not get enough power even to light up a normal tube light. Officials claim that the residents of other streets opted for three-phase connections long back and nobody from the second street applied for one until recently. But the residents complain that no action has been taken yet on a three phase connection application that was submitted almost 45 days ago. Purushothaman, a resident of the street, says that even if the residents were willing to apply for a three phase connection, the Sikkayapuram Panchayat stopped them and promised to bring a three-phase connection all by itself. “We brought this issue up in the Panchayath Grievance Redressal meeting, but we were only given false promises,” he said. He also pointed out that earlier there was no power shortage in the street, as there were many sand crushers nearby. “Now, the crushers have been moved away, and thus, power supply also has come down.”Residents also complain about the pond in the street, unlaid roads and, above all, a 35-year-old transformer. Most of them don’t dare to walk on the street after 7pm for fear of snakes that come out from the pond. “If they had restored the pond as scheduled by the previous government, we would have got proper roads, street lights, a new transformer and a three phase connection,” avers Murugan, a lorry driver and resident of the street. The children have from other strrets have named this street as Anadhai Theru (destitute street), as the civic authorities always turn a blind eye on it, he adds. Panchayat Union President, M Manoharan, claims that the power problems has been reduced after the transformer was serviced recently.Panneer Selvam, assistant engineer in the TNHB, Mangadu division, said that they received only one application for a three-phase connection last month from a resident, Boopathy. The process would take another month as the higher officials had just returned to office after vacation. When asked why the transformer was not changed for more than 35 years, he admitted that it was due to the shortage of transformers and added that they had prepared a proposal to procure a new transformer to replace the old one.