11 hours a day outage in 12 Chitwan VDCs

CHITWAN, July 26: Though the rest of the country is officially facing only two hours of power cut a day, 12 VDCs in Chitwan are still facing 11 hours of power cut. Protesting this, locals of these VDCs padlocked the Nepal Electricity Authority´s (NEA) office here on Saturday night and staged a sit-in in front of the District Administration Office. [break]



Locals have accused the NEA of not showing seriousness about reducing the power cut hours. The NEA sub-station located in Chanauli supplies power to Gitanagar, Shivanagar, Mangalpur, Fulbari, Sharadanagar, Gunjanagar, Dibyanagar, Meghauli, Jagatpur, Shukranagar, Parvatipur and Patihani VDCs.



“The problem started three years ago. For three years, we have been facing more power cuts than the rest of the country,” said Prem Bogati of Mangalpur VDC-9.

Bijay Bhusal of Mangalpur said NEA officials have been informed about the problems for the past three years, but to no avail.



Locals have threatened that they will padlock the NEA office in Bharatpur if the excessive power cut problem is not addressed soon.



The power scarcity has affected agriculture as farmers have not been able to use electricity-powered motors to irrigate land.



Ram Ekbal Yadav, chief of NEA office in Bharatpur, said the problem has occurred because of the low capacity of a transformer. “Another transformer of equal capacity has to be added to ensure smooth supply of electricity,” he said. For that, NEA head office in Kathmandu needs to take a decision, he added.

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