PANAJI
Power Minister Ramkrishna (Sudin) Dhavalikar on Tuesday said it will take at least two more years to put the necessary infrastructure in place across the State to make the power transmission and distribution grid fault-free.
“Everything will be in place in the Power Department. I want more time to put the infrastructure of the department in place. I am not asking for five years, I want two more years to put things in place,” Dhavalikar said at a press conference he addressed to highlight the department’s preparedness for the upcoming monsoon season, which is a challenge.
Chief Electrical Engineer Stephen Fernandes and other top engineers of the Power Department flanked the Minister at the press conference.
Meanwhile, Dhavalikar seemed upset with the trend of consumers taking to social media to complain about power failures and at times even tagging the PMO and CMO.
“It doesn’t affect us and our department’s officials who are working hard to ensure the smooth supply of power,” Dhavalikar said, addressing the trend of complainants tagging the PMO and CMO on social media.
He also alleged that while some complaints are genuine, many are made at the behest of other politicians.
“Some complaints are genuine, and some are lodged at the behest of politicians. They are instigated by politicians. They tweet and tag the Prime Minister’s Office and Chief Minister’s Office, complaining against our officers. This doesn’t make any difference to us,” Dhavalikar said.
On complaints that he is inaccessible and does not respond to calls from consumers, Dhavalikar blamed it on having poor signal at his home.
“I don’t get a range at my home. If you leave a text message, I will respond,” he said.
In response to a query on power outages and voltage fluctuations, Dhavalikar said these are mostly due to trees and branches falling on overhead lines and other issues.
Sometimes due to overload, the power fails because power is consumed at twice or thrice the sanctioned amount of load by consumers, he added.
Dhavalikar also said that power failures due to trees falling on overhead conductors will become history once the underground cabling work across Goa is completed.
According to him, this work of underground cabling started two years ago and so far nearly 40 percent of it is completed.
