Pune:Around 3,000 residents of Yashwin Housing Society in Hinjewadi Phase 2 were left without power for over 22 hours after an underground cable was allegedly damaged on Monday during the PMRDA’s Shivajinagar-Hinjewadi Metro route work.The society has 572 flats in four wings. A large number of IT professionals working from home faced significant disruption because of the prolonged blackout. “We spent over Rs36,000 on nearly 400 litres of diesel to run the generator and keep essential common services operational,” Sandip Shewalkar, a resident of the society, said.Shewalkar said repeated complaints to MSEDCL went unanswered. Complaints lodged online were allegedly marked as resolved without actual power restoration or updates on when the supply would be restored.Maharashtra State Electricity Distribution Company Limited (MSEDCL) in a statement said, “The power supply to Yashwin Housing Society in the Hinjewadi area was disrupted at 12.48pm on Monday after a high-tension line was damaged during the Metro construction work. After nearly 22 hours of continuous efforts, the electricity department staff managed to restore supply at 10.50am on Tuesday.”Metro station work is currently underway near the Döhler Company on the road towards Hinjewadi Phase 3. Multiple layers of concrete were reportedly dumped over MSEDCL cables during the construction work, pushing these deep under the surface. “As a result, the 22 kV high-tension line supplying power to Yashwin Society developed a fault on Monday afternoon. This line feeds electricity to three transformers in the society, affecting around 572 consumers after the disruption,” an MSEDCL official said.Response toTOI’s calls and messages to the PMRDA officials responsible for the Metro work was awaited till the time of going to press.Pratik Kumar, a resident of Yashwin Housing Society, said, “Children had to sleep through the night without ceiling fans because of the outage. Senior citizens, along with almost all residents, faced hardship despite it being no fault of ours. While I was on a day shift and could start work late on Tuesday, those on night shifts were severely impacted as they could not log in to their systems because of the power cut.”Another resident of the society said, “I was unable to log in to my system while working from home because of the power outage. We do have an inverter, but it cannot run continuously for 20-22 hours and eventually gave up.”Balaji Ranganathan, a resident of the society, said, “There has been an increase in long power cuts in the area over the past three months. The authorities concerned must work out a plan to address this issue.”MSEDCL officials said such power outages were recurring in the area. They attributed the problem to lack of coordination between the Metro work’s contractors and the power utility.A senior MSEDCL official said the contractors appointed for Metro works do not coordinate with the MSEDCL before starting digging work in the area and often end up damaging the power utility cables. “Even as the issue was highlighted with the Metro officials on several occasions, there has been no solution to it,” he said.
