Plan to end power woes

HYDERABAD: In order to provide relief to the agriculture sector, the state government on Wednesday cleared a comprehensive plan to ensure replacement of failed distribution transformers (DTRs) within 24 hours in urban areas and within 48 hours in rural areas.The action plan will come into force within a fortnight. Reviewing the plan at a meeting in the Secretariat, principal energy secretary Dinesh Kumar said power utilities should strive to function up to the expectations of chief minister N Kiran Kumar Reddy, who is keen on replacement of failed DTRs promptly. The chief minister has also proposed establishment of call centres which can be easily contacted by farmers over telephone to register their complaints pertaining to defunct transformers and disruption of power supply, he said.The action plan includes maintenance of 4 per cent rolling stock of DTRs at division/sub-division level, timely transport of DTRs in the departmental vehicles without putting the burden on farmers and establishment of call centres within a fortnight.The energy secretary wanted the Discom/District level officials to promote awareness among farmers about the establishment of call centres.The plan will be implemented under the personal supervision of CMDs of Discoms. The director (operations) of Discoms are accountable for its overall implementation, who will also submit regular reports to the government on it. Since the power supply position has improved to a large extent, the principal secretary directed all the CMDs of power utilities to concentrate on rural areas and ensure adequate power supply to the farm sector. He stressed the need to compare manual log books at substations with meter reading instrument data to analyse and ensure feeder-wise power supply to the farm sector as per the guidelines of the government.Special teams will also be deployed as third party inspection authority for verification of number of hours power is supplied to the farm sector and replacement of failed DTRs.The CMDs of APTransco and Discoms, Ajay Jain, Anantha Ramulu, Ahmed Nadeem, A Vidya Sagar Reddy, Ch Narasimha Reddy and other senior officials attended the review meeting.