“Does a transformer repair take a period of six months?…”
By M.S Nazki
The people say the poles are there and the wiring has been done to their homes yet they are without electricity for the last 6 months (180 days)!
Just check out village Panjani, Dharati Balakote, Sub Division Mendhar. And you will for yourself see as to why we raised this issue.
Does a transformer repair take a period of six months? This one has and the reason is that it is lying from where it was detached for repairs.
It is a conceptualized affair here, not to work and keep postponing it, it is sheer callousness and disinterest being shown by the PDD officials PDD Department District Poonch who believe firmly in passage of time theory.
To be honest this is nothing new because this is how the officials work here. Now the transformer is lying somewhere in the location and no one wants to pick it up from there and thus the people are suffering big time.
An old saying aptly fits like a perfect cloak on the PDD officials in district Poonch. We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark, the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light. The PDD workers really are of the light and the reason is that they do not want to get caught on the wrong foot. It is not the question of this village only. There are many others in Mendhar who are facing the similar predicament and the officials are simply not acting.
*Why it is happening is not known but the problems are at several places and the PDD top men are simply not moving or shaking.
This is the time that the pending repair works can be done without any difficulty or impediments. Earlier the reasons would be LOC shelling and the billets flying all over the place in Balakote but that scenario is not there anymore. But still the approach is lackadaisical and the reasons for the same are not known to the people.
Places like Panjani in Mendhar are far too many as I mentioned earlier where the people can prove one theory wrong at least and that is that light thinks it travels faster than anything but it is wrong. No matter how fast light travels, it finds the darkness has always got there first, and is waiting for it. This really is the situation in Balakote and many other areas in Sub Division Mendhar.
Now it is up to the PDD officials to set aside the thinking of the people and get things straight that the light travels faster than anything else. But it will take some doing here.
Mendhar/Balakote:
The general situation in many villages in Mendhar is something like this, the bare bulb in the middle of the room dims and brightens, brightens and dims again. But now it is not lit up for the last six months. As the twilight sets in the silence in the houses descends as darkness moves in sprawling to every nook and corner of the rooms with candles, lanterns and fire pots to chase it away but it is dawn and the morning the people wait for hoping in hope that at least tomorrow the goddamn transformer would be installed. So far all their hopes have met with disappointments!
Village Panjani and the problem of the last six months:
They do not know as what next to do. They have complained to anyone and everyone in the PDD Sub Division Mendhar but no one has budged an inch.
The transformer installed here gave in due to the load which it could not withstand. Not an uncommon thing here and when the transformers blow off it means that the dark days are back because they will not be repaired at priority which will there but somewhere in the last.
People can suffer but PDD officials will take their own time. It is one of the reasons that the villages of Mendhar have never risen to their potential. If the various departments do their job earnestly everything would be fine but the officials and workers work on set old precedence and do not want to move along with time.
The village Panjani falls in Ward No.5 and Ward No.6, Panchayat Dharati, Balakote.
It’s a big village with houses sprawled all over the beautiful landscape. The situation here is that at least sixty to seventy households are without electricity for the last one hundred and eighty days. This is nothing else but shame in the 21st century. If it is not then PDD officials are in some different world all together.
With a great difficulty a PDD transformer was installed here. Subsequently it developed a major fault and had to be taken for repairs. A youth leaders from Balakote Zahier Ahmed while speaking to the media said that this was woeful because the transformer has been lying in the same area and no one has bothered to send it to the workshop.
He appealed to the Chief Engineer PDD who sits in Jammu to look into the matter if he has the time and instruct his XEN District Poonch to get rolling on the matter.
Zahier further requested DC Poonch to look into the situation created so that the people get the necessary relief. They are staying in darkness for the last 6 months.
Someone has to be a bright light here in the dim world of the people of Panjani. They too deserve electricity like all of us. The only fault of the people perhaps is that they were born here. Had this been a major town ship the transformer would already have been repaired and installed but the people of villages are always on the last priority and yet we say that villages are our roots and run extravagant programs like ‘Back To Villages’! For what, to stay without the bulb lighting up for sixty days? Are we taking these programs seriously or cracking jokes on these poor villagers of the modern era? The administration knows the best! Light will always conquer the darkness is a good phrase but how when the force deployed are never in a mood to work! Just think it over!
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