Chatra: After a number of visits to the Department of Electricity for the past six months failed to produce any results, the population of 15 Block Pratappur villages in the Chatra District collected their own funds and was collected in other resources to infect a 2.5 km-length high voltage wire to recover a supply Power in their area.
Villages have a population of around 15,000.
“11,000 kV wire snapped six months ago because of the storm and since then our villages have lived in the dark,” said a villager.
Else Villager Shamsher Qureshi said that they had a crowd-sourced more than Rs 5 lakh through contributions from all villagers while many offered energy for the cause.
“Each house is urged to donate a minimum RS 200 while there is no upper limit.
All agreed after we held a meeting of all villages a few weeks ago.
All work takes nine days to forget,” he said.
This week, all villages lights up again.
QureShi added that around 20 poles affected by the storm were replaced.
“Poland was taken from the nearest bridge construction site because the project lay unfinished for years.
About 100 people voluntarily worked and we associate with personal electricity to repair the power supply,” he said.
The villagers said that they had submitted many applications to the electricity department to see their problems but nothing happened.
“The situation is that local traders suffer losses, children cannot learn.
Even to recharge cellphones, we have to go elsewhere for electricity,” said Qureshi.
A junior engineer Jharkhand Urja Sancharan Nigam Limited Ashok Kumar admitted that they were aware of the problem but the delay was for technical reasons.
He said, “When certain land falls in the forest area, we are waiting for forest permits to take work.
But the villagers do not need to take such permits and they have taken work and finish them without obstacles.” Other officials from the district administration, do not want to be named.
said, “The villagers do work in just nine days what official channels cannot do it for months.
This must be an eye opener for government regulation.”