Baramulla, Jan 22: Dangling electric wires tied with trees, worn-out wooden poles, stranded conductors are posing grave threat to the lives of people as well as to their property in various villages of north Kashmir’s Baramulla district.
The residents of Manzgam Zehanpora, Hajibal, Doodbugh Check, Taripora, Goriwan alleged that they are living under constant fear due to low lying electric wires tied with trees in their villages and the electric wires have been tied with trees and decaying electric poles.
“The electric lines touch roofs of houses and trees on roads posing risk to life and property. In past several fire incidents took place and many people lost their lives due to the low lying electric wires,” said a local resident, Mohmmad Ayaz of Zehanpora.
“Due to low-lying overhead transmission lines, we are not able to work properly in the fields. There have been many incidents of people getting injured after coming in contact with these power lines here,” said another local, Abdul Rashid of Hajibal village.
“We have been requesting the Power Development Department (PDD) officials to replace dangling and damaged electric wires, the decayed makeshift poles from the fields and residential areas but our pleas fell on deaf ears and the problems persist,” said the locals.
The inhabitants of Manzgam, Zehnpora,Taripora, Goriwan , Gujarpati Kalyban, Wansiran, Khal areas complained of similar problem. They demanded that the PDD should immediately replace the decayed makeshift wooden poles with concrete electric poles and align the transmission lines on them.
“The department has failed to erect the electric poles and the transmission lines can be seen hanging from the tree branches and makeshift wooden poles,” said Adil Hussain. “The transmission lines are lying low to the ground, thus posing a grave danger to the lives of people,” he added.
They said that PDD claims of spending crores for repairment, maintenances and augmentation purposes but in reality it is only on papers whereas ground situation is grim.
Consumers claimed that hardly any day passes without the incident of abrupt snapping of conductor in one or other localities in the district.
The condition of High Tension (HT) transmission lines and Low Tension (LT) lines is going from bad to worse with each passing day.
The engineers of the department are least bothered to change electric poles or outdated conductors.
When contacted Executive Engineer PDD Baramulla, Nazir Ahmed Malik, said: “Non-availability of funds is hampering the work of repairing and maintenance.”
