Naveed Bhat
Kulgam: When construction of the receiving station at Nigam village of Damhal Hanjipora in this south Kashmir district started in 2011, the villagers as well those putting up in its vicinity were jubilant as it heralded end of the power woes faced by them for decades.
Announced by then ruling National Conference Government with Omer Abdullah as Chief Minister, the construction is still in its infancy after elapsing of more than seven years. Now that officials are citing funds constraint, it seems the people’s woes may not end soon.
Residents of Nagam told INS that the power development department was “non-serious,” leading to the inordinate delay.
“It seems receiving stations was announced to fool us. Otherwise it would have been commissioned right now, let alone the construction,” the angry villagers said.
“People especially students suffer a lot especially during exams,” they said and urged PDD to complete the work as soon as possible.
“The electricity in our area is very poor. We face more outages, more particularly during the winters. The voltage is very low,” they said.
The people alleged that the successive regimes failed to complete the receiving station and “it speaks volumes about their seriousness towards the people.”
When we contacted, Executive Engineer PDD, Muzaffar Ahmad, said that the receiving station was estimated to come up at around Rs 2 crore 83 lakh and but sufficient funds were not made available to the department to complete the construction.
“Once we get funds, only we can complete it. Hopefully it will be complete in next year,” he added.
